Peter Michaud and Barbara Duffy of the Ballard Spahr law firm stand for a portrait at their office in downtown Minneapolis on March 5. Michaud and Duffy, both St. Paul natives and U of M law school alums, merged law firms Ballard Spahr and Lane Powell last year. (Anthony Soufflé/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

Peter Michaud and Barbara Duffy have a few things in common.

Both grew up in St. Paul, counted themselves among large families and went to law school at the University of Minnesota.

Over the past year, both leaned on their Minnesota roots as their law firm, Ballard Spahr, ushered in a new chapter. The national firm, which has offices reaching from New York to Anchorage, in January completed its merger with Seattle-based Lane Powell, a 150-year-old institution that Duffy most recently led as president.

After bringing the two together, Philadelphia-based Ballard Spahr boasts more than 750 attorneys. One of its 18 offices is in the IDS Center in downtown Minneapolis.

Michaud, Ballard Spahr’s chair, still calls Minnesota home. He is the first non-Philadelphian in the firm’s history to reach the top post, having first joined through a merger with Minneapolis-based Lindquist & Vennum, which Ballard Spahr acquired in 2018.

Duffy now lives in Seattle. She is a leader of the firm, serving on its executive committee.

Challenges that come with a successful merger go well beyond changing signs on the door and copying new sets of keys, according to Michaud and Duffy. Both sat down with the Minnesota Star Tribune last week to discuss how bringing two businesses under one roof can be successful.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Q: When did you compare notes and actually figure out what you had in common?

Michaud: Right around the time that we first met, there was a University of Minnesota Law School alumni magazine that came out that just happened to have two different articles, but we were each featured in those articles.

Duffy: He was on the cover. (Both laugh.)

Michaud: My article was about the fact that I was the new chair of a firm that historically had been managed in the East, and I had only been at the firm about three years, so it was pretty early on. And then Barb’s article was about return to work, about how law firms were getting people back into the office because that was still something that was talked about a lot. So, I think then once we started talking, that’s when we found out we had some commonalities there.

Q: How did the merger with Lane Powell affect Ballard Spahr’s standing on the national stage?

Michaud: It makes us a major player, particularly in certain practices where we believe we have a real advantage over our competitors. It now brings Ballard into the Pacific Northwest, which was an important move for us. It’s an area where we had clients historically but did not have offices, so we felt like there were a lot of synergies between the two firms.

Honestly, one of the things that for me at the onset was most interesting was that we didn’t have crossover in terms of offices. ... When two firms have a strong presence in any particular city, it’s more likely that there could be legal conflicts that prevent you from being able to move forward. Ethical rules prohibit [two sides in a legal dispute from being] represented by the same firm.

Duffy: That was quite important to us, that we were combining with a firm that didn’t have any overlap. It’s not only ethical conflicts, but sometimes personality. Someone knows somebody over that firm, or they had some contentious litigation.

And a big thing for us, too: We built something very special at Lane Powell, and we were very strong, very profitable. But we needed to do this for the next generation of Lane Powell. And we just wanted to keep that together. And we felt like the odds of keeping everyone together — so people didn’t need to feel like they had to leave because of conflicts or what have you — were increased if we combined with a firm outside of our markets.

Q: What comes to mind when putting a successful merger together?

Michaud: I had over 20 years of experience where that’s what I did for my clients. And I’ve seen really great mergers, and I’ve seen terrible ones. And there’s a lot of reasons why a combination can be good or bad.

I’ll start with the good: I firmly believe that over the years, what I saw as the most important thing is that cultural fit. Especially in a professional services industry. We’re not selling widgets, maybe it’s less important for a manufacturer. What we sell is the knowledge that our attorneys have, the advice that they give to the clients. We need our attorneys, our paralegals, to be happy, to enjoy the environment they’re in, to feel like their job is fulfilling and rewarding. And if you combine different cultures, it’s very hard to keep that chemistry up. ... Without that trust and that culture, I think that’s where a combination can go sideways. For me, that’s the No. 1 thing.

Duffy: Yeah, it is. Because there’s a lot of ways to make the business case. But it’s culture, and culture is what keeps people tethered. Otherwise, it’s just another transaction.

Q: Are there lessons you learned that you think apply well to your own clients or others?

Michaud: It helps to realize how important it is for people to be heard, to make sure that you’re listening to the people in your community, whether your community is a manufacturing company or a law firm. I think that that’s a good thing to remind our clients to make sure that they understand that. We are very careful to make sure that if there was a concern, that someone was voicing in either of the firms, that we addressed it.

Change is not always bad. People are so resistant to change, and you have to be open to new ideas and new ways of doing things. And I think a lot of companies forget that. You get stuck in your ways, and you feel like the way you’re doing something is the right way, and you have to just take a step back.

Duffy: One thing I really took away is just that awareness that we put a lot of people through a lot of change. And for the partners, we’ve been living it. It wasn’t hard for us because we’ve been talking about it. It’s been well-socialized. It was when we went to the next layers [that it felt like] it all happened pretty quickly. And just forgetting that of anybody in my organization, I had the most knowledge. ... It wasn’t a sales job, but it was making sure people knew they were considered. This was about all of us, and ‘We think this is good for you, too,’ rather than just saying, ’Take it or leave it.' Which just wasn’t the way we operate.