Philadelphia-headquartered law firm Cozen O’Connor is set to gain more than 50 lawyers in the US Midwest through a merger with Minneapolis-based Moss & Barnett.
The merger, set to go live on 1 January 2026, will bring Cozen’s lawyer headcount in Minneapolis to more than 70 and 1,000 overall across 33 offices. The board of directors and shareholders of both firms voted to approve the merger.
“This combination advances our commitment to deepen our presence across the Midwest, a strategically important region for the firm and our clients,” Michael Heller, Cozen’s chairman and CEO, said. He added Moss & Barnett’s “deep community roots make it a perfect fit for Cozen O’Connor’s strategic vision for growth”.
News of the tie-up comes amid increased merger activity among US law firms as they seek greater scale to outpace rivals and shore up profits. During the first nine months of 2025, 47 mergers were completed, according to Fairfax Associates, up from 43 in 2024.
Cozen is one of a number of mid-market US law firms seeking merger partners to grow in secondary and tertiary markets. Indianapolis-based Taft Stettinius & Hollister is set to combine with Atlanta-based Morris Manning & Martin at the end of December, Taft’s third merger of the year after its tie-up with Denver’s third-largest law firm, Sherman & Howard, and Florida litigation boutique Mrachek Law. Cincinnati-headquartered Frost Brown Todd is also set to enter six new markets across the Northeastern US through a merger with New Jersey stalwart Gibbons at the start of next year, in a move that will create a firm with around 800 lawyers.
Cozen said its merger with Moss & Barnett was “a major step” in its plan to grow its transactional and commercial practices across key Midwest markets, adding the Twin Cities area, which includes the cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, represented a “cornerstone” of that strategy. The Twin Cities is home to the highest concentration of Fortune 500 companies per capita among large US metropolitan areas, among them Target and UnitedHealth Group.
The tie-up will make Cozen’s Minneapolis office its fourth largest after Philadelphia, New York City and Washington DC. The firm also has 50 lawyers based in Chicago, meaning it will have more than 120 lawyers in the Midwest after the merger.
Moss & Barnett launched in 1892 and practices across real estate, corporate, regulatory, IP, energy and public utilities, litigation and real estate finance, as well as trusts and estates and family law. Cozen said the tie-up will add particular strength to its regulatory, transactional and financial practice areas in the Midwest and increase its firm-wide real estate practice to more than 100 lawyers.
The firms’ leaders told Bloomberg Law they expected their combined 2025 revenue to exceed $800m. Moss & Barnett expects to generate $40m this year, the firm’s president and CEO, Brian Grogan, said.
The two firms first explored a merger a decade ago, though Grogan told Bloomberg Law that Moss & Barnett’s leaders decided against it as their clients’ needs were then largely confined to the upper Midwest region. Since then, however, the firm has seen its clients expand their operations throughout the US.
Grogan said of the merger: “Integrating our local expertise with Cozen O’Connor’s national resources and full suite of legal services will provide Minneapolis’s dynamic business community with a robust team capable of handling their most sophisticated legal matters.”
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