Alabama-based Maynard Cooper & Gale and Carolinas-based Nexsen Pruet have officially merged to become one national law firm: Maynard Nexsen.

The merger – initially announced in January but made official April 1 – promised a coast-to-coast impact of dynamic practice area expertise between the two firms — now under one roof. 

In the past three months, Maynard Nexsen’s shared leadership has taken shape. Jeff Grantham, managing shareholder of Maynard Cooper & Gale, became CEO and managing shareholder. 

“It’s been great,” Grantham said in an interview with Yellowhammer News. “It ties into one of the drivers behind this merger, complementary practices, geographies, and markets.”

He pointed to newly-combined capabilities that independently made each firm dominant. 

“There’s synergies and overlaps in certain practice areas. Real estate for one is particularly strong,” Grantham said. “There are complementary practices that we didn’t have, such as construction. And practices we have, like cybersecurity, data privacy, private equity, venture capital markets.

“We’re able to now cross-serve to our clients.”

Grantham leads the firm with Leighton Lord, previously Nexsen Pruet’s chairman and now president and chief strategy officer. While their partnership is new, their friendship goes back a long way to when they were students at Vanderbilt School of Law. 

“I think a lot of times in these kinds of mergers, particularly of the combination of this size, people may not really know each other,” Grantham said. “So when you know someone, you know their values and you know what they’re about, it just seamlessly fits right in.” 

Now officially merged, Maynard Nexsen has more than 550 professionals working across 23 offices in Alabama, California, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, New York, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Washington, D.C.

Grayson Everett is a staff writer for Yellowhammer News. Follow him on Twitter @Grayson270 for coverage of the 2023 Legislative Session.