Barry Flynn (pictured), a partner in the Houston office of Gordon & Rees, will assume his duties as a member of Houston’s Star of Hope Mission board of trustees in January 2013.
Flynn says he was elected Dec. 4 to a three-year term on the board, which oversees the Star of Hope Mission. The mission, which has three facilities, is the largest homeless shelter in Texas and the fifth largest in the country, he says.
“We serve about 1,100 people every night,” Flynn says.
Leslie Benitez (pictured), co-managing partner of Gordon
& Rees’ Austin office, says that in late October, she was named diversity
chairwoman of the steering committee of the Defense Research Institute’s Drug
and Medical Device Committee. Benitez says DRI is a national organization of
defense lawyers who represent pharmaceutical and medical device companies.
“I’ve been doing pharmaceutical litigation about 25 years on the defense side,” Benitez says.
One goal of the DRI steering committee, Benitez says, is to increase the participation of women and minorities in drug and medical device defense work. Benitez says DRI sponsors an annual diversity luncheon at which judges, in-house lawyers and professors discuss the importance of diversity in the work force before an audience that includes hiring and managing partners from major firms.
Benitez says Gordon & Rees opened its Austin office in April 2011. She says she joined Gordon & Rees from the former firm of Clark Thomas & Winters, where she was a partner.
-- Mary Alice Robbins
Robbins is an Austin-based freelance writer and a former Texas Lawyer senior reporter.
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