By Casey Sullivan

The U.S. law firm SNR Denton, Canada's Fraser Milner Casgrain and the Paris-based Salans are discussing an unusual three-way merger that would create a 2,500 attorney law firm.

Leaders of the three firms will present the deal to their partners on Tuesday, according to the firms, and a vote will take place toward the end of November. If the deal is approved, the new law firm would be called Dentons and would have 79 offices in 52 countries.

SNR Denton, with 1,140 lawyers, was created by the 2010 merger of Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal and Britain's Denton Wilde Sapte. The Salans firm, with offices around Europe, has 750 lawyers and Canada's Fraser Milner Casgrain has 500 lawyers.

The merger underscores interest in the Canadian legal market which has attracted a number of foreign law firms seeking mergers to capture work from Canada's energy market.

In 2011, UK-based Norton Rose combined with the Montreal-based Ogilvy Renault and Calgary-based Macleod Dixon to form a 2,900-lawyer international law firm, making it one of the five largest in the world.

The proposed Dentons merger places pressure on domestic Canadian law firms to expand their practices to match competition, said Brad Hildebrandt, a law firm consultant with Hildebrandt Consulting and an adviser to Thomson Reuters.

If the deal is approved, Dentons will be managed by a global leadership board made up of a team of at least 14 lawyers from the three law firms. The tie-up would be effective in the first quarter of 2013.

Joe Andrew, the global chair of SNR Denton, would become chair, according to the firms. Elliott Portnoy, SNR Denton's chief executive officer, will keep his title at the new firm.

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