Perkins Coie and Ashurst have finalized their combination, creating a new globally integrated law firm named Ashurst Perkins Coie. The merged entity is positioning itself around three practice concentrations: technology, energy and infrastructure, and financial services. The announcement was made on June 28, 2026.
What the Combination Means
A law firm merger is a full consolidation of two practices into a single legal entity — shared profits, shared governance, shared brand. That distinction matters because it goes further than an alliance or a referral arrangement, which leave the underlying firms legally and financially separate. Ashurst Perkins Coie is presenting itself as genuinely integrated, not simply co-branded.
The practical effect for clients is a firm that can staff a single engagement with lawyers across multiple jurisdictions without routing work through separate firms with separate billing relationships and separate accountability.
Why These Three Practice Areas
The choice to anchor the new firm around technology, energy and infrastructure, and financial services is a commercial statement as much as a marketing one. Each of those sectors is currently generating large volumes of complex cross-border legal work.
Technology companies need counsel in multiple regulatory environments simultaneously. Energy and infrastructure projects — particularly those tied to the clean energy transition — routinely involve financing, permitting, and construction across different legal systems. Financial services clients face fragmented regulatory oversight that rewards firms with genuine on-the-ground expertise in more than one market.
By emphasizing differentiated strengths in those three areas, Ashurst Perkins Coie is signaling to clients and competitors which mandates it intends to compete for most aggressively.
The Competitive Stakes
Law firm combinations at this scale are designed to shift market position, not just add headcount. Firms that lack a credible global footprint in technology and energy work risk losing mandates to larger rivals that can cover a deal from inception to closing without hand-offs.
The branding choice — hyphenating both legacy names rather than adopting a new one — also reflects the commercial logic. Both Perkins Coie and Ashurst carry client relationships and reputations built over decades. Discarding either name would risk disrupting those relationships before the combined firm has a chance to establish its own track record.
What the merged firm looks like in practice — its headcount, geographic reach, and revenue — was not disclosed in the announcement.