A dozen lawyers from Clark, Thomas & Winters join Gordon & Rees

Gordon & Rees opened a new office in Austin and expanded in Houston with 12 new attorneys who joined the firm today from Austin-based Clark, Thomas & Winters. The new Austin office is the 19th for Gordon & Rees of San Francisco. Kenneth Ferguson is the managing partner of the new Austin office. Other new partners in Austin are Leslie Benitez, Michael Klatt and Andrew Hutton, while the new associates include David Bonnin, Lark Campbell, Elizabeth Cash, Lina Garcia, Shavonne Henderson and Shaun Lyons. In Houston, the new partners are Laura De Santos and Jeffrey Lilly. Ferguson did not immediately return a telephone message seeking comment. In a statement, Ferguson wrote that the firm provides him opportunity to offer clients a “comprehensive range of legal services.” Most of the new attorneys will practice in Gordon & Rees’ drug and medical device practice. Dion Cominos, managing partner of Gordon & Rees, says his firm moved into Austin because off the opportunity to bring on the Clark, Thomas group. “Austin is an attractive city for a lot of reasons, but this really accelerated to expanding there by finding the right group of people to do it with,” he says. He says lawyers at his firm know many of the new attorneys from working together on drug and medical device litigation. Meade Bauer, president of Clark, Thomas did not immediately return a telephone message seeking comment. Clark, Thomas has lost a number of attorneys recently, including a group of 29 who left to form a new firm in Austin on March 14, Duggins Wren Mann & Romero and a group that left Clark, Thomas to open an Austin office for Minneapolis litigation firm Bowman and Brooke on Feb. 1. With the new lawyers, the 435-lawyer Gordon & Rees has more than 40 lawyers in Texas offices in Austin, Dallas and Houston.
-- Brenda Sapino Jeffreys