Los Angeles-based Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher has named a co-partner-in-charge for its Irvine office,a sign of the firm’s succession plan for its local office.
Jeffrey Reeves, a complex litigation partner at Gibson’s OC office, is set to co-manage with Jeffrey Thomas, who has ran the office for nearly 10 years.
Thomas, a litigation partner and co-chair of Gibson’s firmwide complex litigation department, recently was elected to Gibson’s executive committee. He is set to take on additional management responsibilities firmwide and continue practicing in OC.
Reeves and Thomas are set to co-manage the Irvine office through the year. Reeves will become the sole partner in charge come January. Thomas then will focus on his litigation practice and other management roles.
“Jeff has done a stellar job managing the office for almost 10 years,” Reeves said. “My goal is to follow his example and make sure the transition is a smooth one that isn’t noticed.”
The firm tapped Reeves because he is well connected in the county’s business community, Gibson managing partner Ken Doran said.
“He will be a terrific leader,” Doran said. “Jeff is very connected to the Orange County business community and is committed to continuing to build our Orange County office.”
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3161 Michelson: Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher |
Reeves joined Gibson in 1991 after earning a law degree from University of Houston Law Center. He wants to deepen the firm’s roots in OC by attracting more local clients and hiring more lawyers.
“I want us to be very visible in this county,” Reeves said. “I want to ensure that over the next several years that we maintain a high profile here.”
Gibson, which last year moved into an 80,000-square-foot office at Maguire Properties Inc.’s Park Place campus in Irvine, counts about 76 lawyers in OC. It’s the sixth biggest firm here, according to the Business Journal’s most recent list of law firms.
It’s one of several national and global firms to capitalize on work in the county, thanks to a slew of fast-growing, small to midsize companies in OC.
Gibson competes with the top three law firms in the county: Costa Mesa-based Rutan & Tucker, Irvine-based Knobbe Martens Olson & Bear LLP and Newport Beach’s Stradling Yocca Carlson & Rauth.
It also competes with national and global law firms that have offices here such as Latham & Watkins LLP and Boston-based Bingham McCutchen, both which have offices in Costa Mesa.
Growing Practice
Despite increased competition among law firms for work, Reeves said Gibson’s OC office has kept busy in the past year. It’s handled work related to patents, litigation and mergers and acquisitions for healthcare companies and medical device and drug makers. Local clients include Irvine’s Allergan Inc. and Edwards Lifesciences Corp. as well as Orange’s St. Joseph Health System.
Other practice areas that are growing for the firm include complex corporate work such as securities compliance and litigation, Reeves said.
While many firms are scaling back on real estate work in response to a slower market, Gibson’s Irvine office is seeing an upswing in transactions related to retail and commercial development, according to Reeves.
“We haven’t seen a slowdown in real estate work. We’re growing across all of the boards,” Reeves said.
As for hiring more lawyers, the firm expects to have 16 associates interning with it this summer and hopes to recruit all of them, Reeves said.
Gibson also is looking at lateral hires.
Last year the firm nabbed Terrence Allen from O’Melveny & Myers’ Newport Beach office to work on mergers and acquisitions, securities offerings and other corporate transactions.
Allen’s worked on some big deals for Gibson. He represented Corona-based cement company Robertson’s Ready Mix Ltd. when it was acquired last month by Japan’s Mitsubishi Materials Corp. for $900 million.
“We’re always in touch with the marketplace and we’re waiting for the right opportunities to come along,” Reeves said.
