Gordon Rees Posts 15% Revenue Gain as It Pushes National ‘Brand’

Gordon Rees Scully Mansukhani, a firm now operating in all 50 US states, boosted its gross revenue by 15% in 2023 after adding nearly 170 attorneys and another four office locations.

The firm, which has nearly tripled in size in the last decade, finished last year with 1,331 lawyers in 78 US office locations, who contributed to a gross revenue of $612.8 million, up from $531.1 million in 2022, according to figures shared with Bloomberg Law. The firm declined to disclose its net income and profits per partner.

Founded as an insurance defense law firm in 1974 in San Francisco, Gordon Rees is a symbol of the push for scale in the legal industry this century. Largely operating out of California in the early 2000s, the firm said in 2019 it became the first legal operation with an office in every US state, the need for which its leaders ascribed to the national footprint of many large businesses and the stiff competition attorneys are in for clients.

“So many firms say the same things: ‘We’re responsive, we’re solutions-oriented, we’re cost-effective,” said Dion Cominos, a San Francisco-based litigator who has served as managing partner since 2006. “By becoming the first 50-state law firm, we created a differentiated marketing proposition. Now clients don’t have to think whether we have an office in A, B or C.”

Dion Cominos

“The strategy has worked,” added Cominos, pointing to active practices in litigation, labor and employment and insurance, which remains a major client base. The firm’s big corporate clients include Travelers Insurance, Aetna and Ford Motor Co., according to Bloomberg Law litigation analytics.

As a firm focused heavily on litigation, Cominos said Gordon Rees has been largely immune from the slowdowns in capital markets and mergers and acquisitions that have prompted cuts in other parts of the legal sector. Silicon Valley-based Fenwick & West earlier this year laid off 10% of attorneys and staff.

“We’ve been on a hiring spree and by no means saw any effect from any of the slowdown in tech or anything like that,” Cominos said. Those hires include the addition of a 19-lawyer litigation team based in New York and New Jersey last March.

Pressure to Grow

The growth trajectory for Gordon Rees comes as many firms face pressure to get bigger, fueled in part by the increased competition for talent and the more complex regulatory environment businesses are facing across the world.

In response to these factors, most firms are looking to make deeper investments in major markets and specific industries, said Lisa Smith, a law firm consultant at Fairfax Associates. Others, by contrast, are pushing into many different geographic areas.

“The question there is really about integration,” said Smith, who declined to comment on Gordon Rees. “Are the firms following a geographically dispersed strategy able to deliver across those offices or is it a brand” that’s operating akin to “a referral network?”

Some of those outside pressures have created a healthy appetite for consolidation among law firms. Arent Fox and Schiff Hardin merged in 2022 to create a firm of about 600 lawyers and gross revenue that eclipsed $500 million in 2022. Brian Waldman, the firm’s new managing partner, said in January that the firm is eyeing opportunities to get bigger after a successful combination.

The UK’s Allen & Overy and US-based Shearman & Sterling, meanwhile, are planning to merge this year to create a 3,900-lawyer transatlantic firm with revenue between them that surpass $3 billion.