Miller & Sanford to merge

by Paul Flemming

SBJ Staff

This time, the courtship ended in a wedding date being set. Two years ago the process didn't get beyond sparking on the front porch.

Miller & Sanford PC will merge with Lathrop & Gage LC Jan. 1.

Six shareholders at Miller & Sanford, the 57-year-old Springfield firm, voted to approve the merger with the large Kansas City firm that opened its own office here in 1998. Craig Oliver, a seventh shareholder of Miller & Sanford, will not move to the merged firm.

Miller & Sanford was Lathrop & Gage's first, but not only, candidate for merger, said Tom Stewart, managing partner of the Kansas City firm.

"We approached Miller & Sanford even before we opened our Springfield office," Stewart said. "At that time (a merger) wasn't particularly right for them, and it wasn't particularly right for us."

With the opening of its own office in Springfield in 1998, the Kansas City firm continued to assess its plans here. "We needed to be a larger, more full-service firm ... in order to serve our clients there," Stewart said.

"It is the collective judgment of five other lawyers, who I've come to respect greatly, and myself, that this will be a real benefit to our clients," said Frank Evans, managing partner of Miller & Sanford. Evans will be managing partner for the Springfield office of Lathrop & Gage.

Miller & Sanford has 13 attorneys now. After the merger is complete, the office will have 15 lawyers. The negotiations that resulted in the merger began in the spring of this year.

"The unavoidable force out there is that clients require increasingly sophisticated levels of service," Evans said. "Industry and clients are driving consolidation. In our world today ... things are significantly more complex."

The resources, specialization and geographical locations of Lathrop & Gage the firm has offices in Kansas City