"I think first and foremost it takes away a lot of old complacency in the sense that you have to now be competitive and forward-looking," said Tim Lukas, president and managing shareholder of Nevada-based law firm Hale Lane. "I think the entrance of national and regional firms is a recognition of the strength and growth in our legal markets."

Large business law firm Duane Morris LLP has announced it plans to merge with San Francisco-based Hancock Rothert & Bunshoft, which has a Las Vegas office. The merger is set for completion by Jan. 1. The Las Vegas office of Hancock Rothert & Bunshoft has four lawyers.

Philadelphia-based Duane Morris will have more than 600 lawyers in 19 offices following the merger with the 70-lawyer Hancock Rothert. Duane Morris practices in a wide variety of business law areas. Hancock Rothert also has offices in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Lake Tahoe and London.

Duane Morris' announcement follows the entrance of international law firm Greenberg Traurig into Las Vegas' legal market in June. That firm merged with the locally based intellectual property law firm Quirk & Tratos.

Lukas said that despite the entrance of larger firms, there will still be a need for Nevada-based firms because they understand the unique issues businesses face in Nevada.

"I think for Nevada firms, the good firms will still stay strong," he said. "Those clients who have business in Nevada need Nevada attorneys."

The Las Vegas office of Hancock Rothert & Bunshoft is led by Dominica Anderson, who has been licensed to practice in Nevada since 1987. The firm's other lawyers include Matt Gabe, a former deputy in the the Nevada attorney general's office, Elizabeth Kim and partner Peter Whalen.

"Nevada has emerged as a major business center, and many savvy companies are looking to the state for future growth and prosperity," Anderson said in a press release earlier this year. "We are not new to the state -- our ties to Nevada are deeply rooted, going back 20 years to our involvement in litigation stemming from major construction delays in the Clark County Advanced Wastewater Treatment Plant, as well as serving as lead counsel in coverage litigation arising from the ... MGM fire."

Sheldon Bonovitz, chairman of Duane Morris, said the firm enters new markets by recruiting lawyers in that market to join the firm.

"We look to recruit lateral partners who would see a national firm as an attractive alternative to their present firms," Bonovitz said.

The Las Vegas Hancock Rothert office currently operates in the areas of commercial and business litigation as well as insurance coverage issues. He said the firm hopes the office will branch further into the areas of commercial litigation, intellectual property and some transactional work.

He said the firm has local clients and that the merger will help the firm serve them more effectively.

"We do some work for one of the large casinos -- the Venetian -- and so we would like to take advantage of the opportunities our existing client base presents," Bonovitz said.

Angela Spall, marketing director of Lionel Sawyer & Collins, said that when larger national firms enter an emerging market there is always the risk that they will not get the results they were hoping for and will leave. She said in her experience in Miami, which was an emerging legal market in the 1990s, larger firms entered that market; some of them stayed and some of them left.

But she said a larger firm isn't likely to enter a new market without a strategy for success.

"We must assume a national law firm wouldn't just open up an office in Las Vegas without having a major client here or a sound strategy to make it work out for them," Spall said in an e-mail.

She said as the Las Vegas legal market has grown it has also increased in complexity.

"Our legal marketplace here in Las Vegas is becoming more and more complex as major regional and national law firms arrive," Spall said. "It will be interesting to watch over the next few years."

George Ogilvie, managing partner at the Las Vegas office of McDonald Carano Wilson, said the success of firms expanding into Nevada's legal market depends on how carefully devised the firm's strategy for success is. He said Phoenix-based Quarles & Brady Streich Lang is an example of a successful firm that didn't successfully expand into Nevada. He said the firm lacked local lawyers who understood Nevada's political and legal climates; the firm eventually closed its Nevada operations.

"It really depends on how you do it," Ogilvie said. "If a big firm came to Las Vegas and bought an existing successful sophisticated firm they're going to probably fare a lot better than if they just come to town and open an office and staff it with their own lawyers. For the most part that's what Streich Lang did. For the most part they brought outside people who didn't understand the landscape here."

Bonovitz said Duane Morris' pending merger with Hancock Rothert is an example of the consolidation going on in the legal industry nationwide. He said mergers in the legal industry reflect what is going on in the rest of the business community.

"It's consistent with Corporate America," Bonovitz said. "Large corporations are cutting the number of law firms they want providing services to them. They want law firms that have the geographic breadth to service their needs."

In other news:

Fred "Pete" Gibson III has joined Lionel Sawyer & Collins as a shareholder and senior member of the firm's litigation department. Gibson is formerly a partner with Hale Lane. Gibson works in such areas of white collar criminal defense, Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, mining law litigation and business torts.

Gibson is also a former assistant U.S. attorney in the District of Nevada and a former associate general counsel for American Pacific Corp. He said although he had opportunities to hire on with national firms he said he wanted to remain with a Nevada firm.

"'I would prefer to go with a firm that largely has the established continuity than going with one of the newer firms that are looking to acquire it," Gibson said.

Alana Roberts covers courts and labor relations for In Business Las Vegas and its sister publication, the Las Vegas Sun. She can be reached by e-mail at alanar@lasvegassun.com or at (702) 259-4059.