Another Law Firm Bites the Dust

“It is anticipated that Thacher Proffitt will discontinue the practice of law and will begin an orderly dissolution after December 31, 2008,” said law firm Thacher Proffitt & Wood in a press release yesterday. The 160-year old firm will wind down its operations by the end of the year. The firm also announced that 100 of its 200 lawyers are going to move to Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal.

Thacher, like Heller Ehrman and Thelen Reid, large firms that also dissolved in the last few months, was heavily involved in the structured finance work on behalf of aggregators of mortgages into securitized pools. When the credit crisis hit, this business simply disappeared.

Thacher tried to complete a merger with King & Spalding, but that didn’t work out. Are there more large law firms headed this way? I believe so. Which ones? I’d rather not say, but I think most of us who have followed the news have a pretty good idea.

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