Gordon & Rees LLP
Executives:
Miles Scully, managing
partner; Gery Zacher, equity partner;
Roger Mansukhani, equity partner
Revenue:
$8 million in 2000
Location:
101 W. Broadway, Ste. 1600
Employees:
36 attorneys, 36 support staff
Business:
Full-service law firmWhen Gery
Zacher and Miles Scully came to San Diego 11 years ago, they didn’t plan to stick around for long.
The two, then attorneys with the San Francisco law firm of Gordon & Rees LLP, were in town to try a case. They set up shop in a small office in the old Home Savings building Downtown and tried the case in three months.
Not only did they pick up a favorable verdict, they also decided they had found the perfect place to set up shop.
“It wasn’t as if the firm said, ‘We strategically think San Diego would be the place to move the firm,'” Scully said.
The San Francisco headquarters agreed and the two headed the San Diego office, which started with five attorneys. The firm has since grown from the 10 people it employed in 1999, the same year Scully was named managing partner, to more than 35 today.
The firm boasts about tripling in size in just two years and doing it at a time when many other firms are downsizing.
“As part of our strategic plan, we decided what we wanted to do was provide all the major services that the big firms in San Diego provide,” Scully said.
Gordon & Rees primarily handled litigation cases. The firm has expanded its services locally to include employment, transactional, real estate and intellectual property law.
The first sign of growth came earlier this year when three partners from Littler Mendelson, a national employment law firm, joined the firm to start its Southern California employment group. The firm hired all four principal attorneys from the former law firm of Harmsen Carpenter Sidell & Olson to enhance its corporate and securities group. They also brought in two local real estate attorneys to head the firm’s Southern California real property group just a few months ago.
One of those real estate attorneys was Eric Young, who was the hiring partner at Pillsbury Madison & Sutro LLP. Young’s move two months ago only took him a few floors down to a new office. But by joining Gordon & Rees, Young, who kept the bulk of his client base, was able to cut his fees by more than $75 an hour.
“It (Pillsbury Madison) was a wonderful place to work, but it was the institution that was changing,” Young said. “The firm itself was trying to have a makeover.”
Young said the firm was gradually increasing fees and migrating toward premium billing clients. He said his existing and new clients are happy with the Gordon’s fee structure and climate.
Scully said the firm doesn’t have to charge hefty fees because their overhead is lower than most firms. The overhead at Gordon & Rees, which includes cost for almost all services except salaries, is less than $100,000, compared to costs ranging from $150,000 to $200,000 at larger firms, he said.
Gordon & Rees also has less support staff than many firms. Rather than having a secretary per attorney, one is assigned to work with three attorneys.
“All of our attorneys are trained to use their computers as their secretary,” Scully said.
Two years ago, Scully said, Gordon & Rees was probably the best-kept secret in San Diego. Now they are appearing on people’s radar screens and several companies are leaving their firms for Gordon. According to Scully, the reason the companies change firms is simple.
“I think we’re giving clients what they want,” he said. “That’s top-level attorney service at a better price.”
Gordon & Rees’ revenues have also increased substantially over the years. The firm has grown from $2.5 million in 1994 to $4.4 million in 1999 and nearly $8 million in 2000. The firm surpassed last year’s figure in August.
The firm’s client list is impressive, ranging from local firms like WD-40, NCR and Qualmeg to the University of California system and its San Diego campus and national firms like American Home Products and McDonald’s.
Scully said the firm’s success simply could be luck, but he’s not surprised at how far it has come since the beginning.
“The evolution was one where we started slowly,” Zacher said. “We developed a level of comfort with what we were doing. We wanted to establish a solid base here, and once we established that, we made some modest growth. Over the last several years, we’ve been able to attract additional (attorneys).”
Gordon & Rees wants to be one of the top three law firms in San Diego in three years. Without revealing specific details, Scully said plans could easily grow the firm to more than 50 attorneys in the next few months.
“We haven’t seen a limitation to what we’re trying to do, so we’re not held back by saying, ‘We can’t do this and can’t do that,'” Scully said. “So it doesn’t surprise me when we achieve goals that seem a little crazy to other people.”
That drive to expand and grow is not limited to Gordon’s San Diego office. Scully said the motivation is spreading to the firm’s offices in Los Angeles, Orange County and the headquarters in San Francisco.
“This is just a laboratory for what we’re getting done firmwide,” he said.
“The idea is to hire to best people from the best firms, and then because of the way we run our office, they can provide the same service at a better price.”
