Each week, the Law.com Barometer newsletter, powered by the ALM Global Newsroom and Legalweek brings you the trends, disruptions, and shifts our reporters and editors are tracking through coverage spanning every beat and region across the ALM Global Newsroom. The micro-topic coverage will not only help you navigate the changing legal landscape but also prepare you to discuss these shifts with thousands of legal leaders at Legalweek 2026, taking place from March 9-12, 2026, in New York City at the North Javits Center. Registration is now open. The Shift: Big Law Is Still Running the Geographic Expansion Playbook—and Winning Even in the era of headline-dominating merger mania, more conventional forms of geographic expansion remain a critical strategy for the most influential Am Law firms, and a key driver of rapidly intensifying (and highly disruptive) industry consolidation. There’s no shortage of proof to begin the year. Kirkland & Ellis recently entered Nashville, which firm chairman Jon Ballis called “an ideal environment for our continued growth by enhancing our ability to attract exceptional legal talent in a vibrant and growing city with talented lawyers and a strong law school community.” Consistent with Kirkland’s strategy in a Philadelphia launch a year ago, the Nashville office is made up of key litigators, though the firm says Nashville will quickly become a full-service office. We learned the same day that Latham & Watkins will be opening an office in Dallas. It’s not every week that the No. 1- and No. 2-ranked Am Law firms (by revenue) plant proverbial flags in new markets. But those are just two of the numerous examples in only the first few weeks of 2026. Simpson Thacher & Bartlett will open a San Franciso office to pair with its nearby Palo Alto outpost. San Franciso also is the location of Ballard Spahr’s newest office. Houston provided a launchpad (pun intended) for Sullivan & Cromwell and Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison (who both poached Kirkland in the process). Haynes and Boone gained a foothold in another well-saturated Big Law market: Boston. Womble Bond Dickinson opened three new shops via hiring a large team from dissolving McGlinchey Stafford. Weil, Gotshal & Manges loves Texas enough to launch its third office there, in Austin. Morrison & Foerster and McGuireWoods both entered Seattle thanks to departees from merger-bound Perkins Coie. Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, Offit Kurman and Littler also opened new offices, to go along with numerous other firms on or outside the Am Law rankings. The Conversation Law firm mergers present highly visible market shifts. Entire firms are subsumed in one fell swoop. Rankings change, brands disappear. In the lead-up time to such firm combinations, partner runoff drives significant hiring activity for opportunistic rivals. But all the same sorts knock-on effects are caused by more conventional forms of geographic expansion, too. New firm incursions can be “incredibly disruptive” to existing firms, said Roxanne Jensen, founder of law firm consultancy EvolveLaw and former office managing partner for Morrison Foerster in Denver. “It’s gotten more and more sophisticated over time,” Jensen said, adding that firms “are having a much more disciplined, data-based approach to geographic expansion.” As an example of the potential disruption, Jensen pointed to her home market, where incumbent firm Sherman & Howard in 2024 lost eight lawyers to Venable’s new Denver office. Later that year, Sherman, with its 132-year history, would merge into Taft Stettinius & Hollister. The year before, Hogan Lovells lost a pair of laterals to Womble’s new Denver outpost, which quickly grew further thanks to its merger with Lewis Roca. Sarah Morris, a partner at recruiting firm Macrae, pointed out that new market entrants can have the buying power to reset the partner compensation landscape. “Word gets out what various partners are paid to make a move,” and that makes some partners at legacy firms more willing to answer recruiting calls, Morris said. The Significance Despite indications that Am Law firms are more cautious about planting flags in new markets, law firms are not always “city agnostic.” The above-noted activity (in barely six weeks’ time) shows that the traditional geographic expansion strategy hasn’t been abandoned at all. More to the point, incumbent firms shouldn’t lose sight of what the mounting impact of an ambitious market entrant can be, including serious ramifications on talent share. Look no further than the first firm mentioned above. Going back to 2014—and as recently as last year—Kirkland has opened offices in key markets including Houston, Boston, Dallas, Austin, Miami and Philadelphia. In some of those offices, the firm has achieved tenfold attorney headcount increases, according to Law.com Compass data. These growth rates well outpace the firm’s 146% firmwide headcount increase from 2013-2024.