About Jack El-Hai

How to Handle a Merger

During his 30-year career, William “Bill” Lee’s path has carried him from the Iran-Contra investigations of the 1980s to the management of a major law firm. But no decision came harder than Lee’s recent resolution to lead his firm into a merger. In May 2004, Hale and Dorr, for which Lee had served as managing partner for the previous four years, joined with Wilmer Cutler Pickering of Washington, D.C., creating a combined entity of more than a thousand lawyers with greater than …