Morgan Lewis will integrate the 54-member legal team from Kramer Levin based in Paris.

Morgan Lewis will integrate the 54-member legal team from Kramer Levin based in Paris.

Morgan Lewis & Bockius has announced its intention to integrate a team of 54 lawyers from the Paris office of the US firm Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel, as stated on Friday.

This strategic move precedes Kramer Levin’s upcoming transatlantic merger with Herbert Smith Freehills, which is anticipated to commence next May, pending approval from the partnerships of both firms. Notably, Kramer Levin’s Paris office, its sole international location, is not part of this merger.

This acquisition marks a substantial growth for Morgan Lewis’s Paris office, increasing its lawyer count to approximately 70, which includes 23 partners. This development mirrors a previous arrangement where Morgan Lewis absorbed a 20-member team from Shearman & Sterling to establish a presence in Munich in 2023, prior to Shearman’s merger with Allen & Overy to create A&O Shearman. The new Paris team is headed by corporate partner Dana Anagnostou and private equity partner Sébastien Pontillo, who previously co-led Kramer Levin’s Paris office.

Their addition will significantly enhance Morgan Lewis’s capabilities in French and cross-border corporate matters, strengthening its expertise in M&A, private equity, contracts, banking and finance, compliance, litigation, employment, intellectual property, tax, and investigations. Steven Wall, managing partner of Morgan Lewis, remarked that the team’s integration will bolster the firm’s capacity to capitalize on the growing French and European equity markets for clients, while remaining agile in exploring opportunities in key sectors such as alternative finance, cryptocurrency, technology, renewable energy, and biotechnology.

Anagnostou will assume the role of co-managing partner of Morgan Lewis’s Paris office, working alongside current partner Sabine Smith-Vidal. Vidal characterized the team’s addition as an “exciting and market-changing development on multiple levels – for our office, for our European team, for our firm, and for our clients.”