When Midwest-based Frost Brown Todd was looking for an East Coast partner to join their ever-growing law firm, Managing Partner Adam Hall said there was plenty to like about Gibbons P.C.

There was a history of excellence — and a large client list — not only in New Jersey but along the Amtrak corridor.

There was a history of top attorneys, many of which brought new expertise.

And there was the name itself, which carried weight around the country.

“The Northeast is not an easy place for a firm that has the bulk of its attorney population in the Midwest to enter or to find the right partner to enter those markets,” Hall said. “So, to be able to find an ideal partner for us in Gibbons was incredible.”

But if you think this was a one-way deal, think again.

Gibbons Managing Director Peter Torcicollo said a potential merger brought plenty to the Newark-based firm, too.

The ability to serve the ever-growing national needs of their clients. The ability to pull in the expertise of a much-larger bench of attorneys. The ability to use the economies of scale to invest in the new technology that is required to play in the legal world, today.

“The more we looked at it, the more we talked about it, the more it made sense,” Torcicollo said.

That’s why they merged at the start of the year, forming FBT Gibbons, now an 800‑attorney firm with 25 offices nationwide.

FBT Gibbons already is proving to be a great move for both sides. And it’s doing so for one key reason: Torcicollo and Hall, the co-managing partners of the new firm, said everyone involved really seems to like each other.

“This wasn’t picking up five or six lawyers in Pittsburgh or eight or 10 lawyers in DC, this is a massive sea change for us — and the only conceivable way this would have made any sense is if we met with the critical mass of Frost Brown Todd lawyers and realized, ‘Wow, they’re just like us,’” he said.

“Before we even started talking about a potential business relationship, I knew that I liked them. And when the meetings between the two firms started ramping up, every time we visited a different one of their offices, and the circle of people involved in the conversation expanded, what we kept seeing was folks who like each other the way we like each other.”

For Torcicollo and Gibbons, the announcement was the end of a nearly four-year process that begin around the time Torcicollo took the role as managing director at the firm in February of 2022.

“When I took this job, we embarked on a strategic plan with three primary components: Financial strength of the organization, sustainability and strategic growth,” he said. “But when we first embarked on our strategic plan, we didn’t even know that something like this would be possible for a firm like ours.”

Torcicollo and Gibbons just knew they needed something.

Gibbons had established itself as a premier mid-market firm in New Jersey, but Torcicollo said he knew the firm needed more.

“Gibbons could have been just fine as a 160-lawyer firm in New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia and Wilmington, Delaware,” he said. “But for a smaller firm in a regional or even a single-state presence to really thrive, you need to start making different choices about specialization and what size you’re actually going to be.

“I think what we’ve set ourselves up to be the leading national-facing mid-size firm.”

Hall couldn’t agree more.

Hall had been part of many mergers since the firm got its start in 2000, when Cincinnati-based Frost & Jacobs and Louisville-based Brown, Todd & Heyburn merged.

Since then, the firm has expanded throughout the Midwest, the Southwest (in Texas), the Rocky Mountains (in Denver) and California (North and South).

Each expansion brought more talent and geographic reach. This merger does that and more. Hall points to the ability to upgrade technology in an increasingly technologically driven industry.

“We were around 650 attorneys before we got together with Gibbons, but there were still some challenges,” he said. “In today’s environment, technology and artificial intelligence are rapidly changing the way that we practice — and there are expensive investments. You have to have economies of scale in order to make those investments and be able to compete for the best talent.”

And compete for clients.

“As the middle-market clients we represent grow, they tend to outgrow local and even limited regional firms,” Hall said. “They are looking for firms that can cover more geography and have deeper benches to serve them.

“Growth is important. The legal industry has been historically an incredibly fragmented industry, but that has been changing, and it looks like that pace of change is starting to pick up again.”

Torcicollo feels the merger is keeping the Gibbons’ group ahead of the curve.

“We were a New Jersey firm for many years,” he said. “And we have a number of clients that are really New Jersey specific, but even there some of those clients are expanding and have national needs.

“To have a presence throughout the Midwest — we’re in Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee — and in Texas, Colorado and California is incredible. The ability to service our clients’ needs across the country has exploded.

“In fact, we were seeing the fruits of that even before the official go live date on Jan. 1, and we’re really seeing more of it since.”

Here’s how Torcicollo really knows the merger was the right move: He said he has never had to explain it to clients.

“No one is asking about it,” he said. “The clients who have been with us for many years, even the ones that really are New York-New Jersey specific, are uniformly congratulating us because they see the value of a scaled-up firm.

“Just the scale by itself enables us to offer more — on a more cost-effective basis — to even a New Jersey-specific client.”

Which begs the question: How scaled up will the new firm go?

“We certainly don’t intend to just stand pat with what we have in the Northeast now,” Hall said. “I think Pete and I and the rest of our team will be looking as to how we can add more talent in the Northeast over the next few years.”