Ahead of a looming merger vote with Locke Lord, a roughly 20-lawyer IP group from Edwards Wildman Palmer in Boston is poised to depart for Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo as a result of a conflict between their practice representing a large pharmaceutical company and Locke Lord’s work for a generic drug manufacturer, according to five sources familiar with the matter.
Locke Lord and Edwards Wildman announced plans in early September to combine their operations by year’s end into a 1,000-lawyer firm with offices in 23 cities called Locke Lord Edwards. Leaders of both firms told The Am Law Daily at the time that they wanted to expedite the integration process in order to finalize a union by January 2015.
