Gordon Rees Scully Mansukhani's national expansion continued this week as the Am Law 200 firm announced the opening of new offices in Detroit and Missoula, Montana.

The two new outposts will be the 662-lawyer firm's 49th and 50th offices nationwide and the second and third office opened by Gordon Rees so far in 2018.

“Our expansion's been driven by different factors and there are times when it's client-driven, there are times when it's the market and there are times when it's opportunity-driven,” said Dion Cominos, managing partner of San Francisco-based Gordon Rees, which adopted its current name in 2014. “And, in this particular case, it was the latter.”

Nathan Huey, of counsel in Gordon Rees' Denver office, was relocating to Missoula, but still wanted to continue working at the firm, Cominos said. Huey, a former Sidley Austin associate, works with clients in commercial, products liability and class action litigation, among other areas. Huey, who was out of the office Tuesday and unavailable for comment, spent some time at Missoula-based Spoon Gordon Ballew after leaving Sidley in 2014.

“It was just making lemonade out of the situation by opening a location there since our clients have needs throughout the country,” Cominos said.

Once named “Hell Gate” by French fur trappers, Missoula's economy has expanded in recent years, thanks to gains in the technology, health care and energy sectors.

Many companies are looking to expand to lower-cost rural markets like Missoula, said Cominos, adding that these potential clients are looking to have their service providers have boots on the ground in even more remote outposts.

Huey will be Gordon Rees' sole attorney on the ground in Missoula, but the office managing partner will be Denver-based health care partner Thomas Quinn, who will oversee the Montana operation from the Mile-High City.

Cominos acknowledged that Gordon Rees, which last year expanded into Rhode Island after absorbing a small Providence-based firm, has been in conversations with other smaller firms in Missoula about a potential combination. The city is home to only one other Am Law 200 firm, Dorsey & Whitney, while Montana itself remains dominated by local firms. (Holland & Hart, another Am Law 200 firm, has an office in Billings.)

“So it may be that we expand there pretty quickly,” said Cominos about Gordon Rees' plans in Big Sky country.

In addition to the firm's entry into the Missoula market, Gordon Rees is also setting up shop in Detroit.

James “Jamey” Hiller, a partner in Gordon Rees' Chicago office, will become its new Detroit managing partner, while senior counsel Ashley Felton Eckerly will also relocate to the Motor City from the Windy City.

As in Missoula, Cominos said that Gordon Rees is eager to build out its outpost in Detroit. Both new offices are part of a national expansion strategy adopted by the fast-growing firm.

“It's a formula that's worked well for us,” Cominos said. “We've been very fortunate to have enterprising partners who want to expand in local markets and have done a good job of finding similarly oriented folks.”

In 2017 alone, Gordon Rees opened nine new offices across the country in Cincinnati; Columbus, Ohio; Milwaukee; Oklahoma City; Omaha and Lincoln, Nebraska; Providence; Salt Lake City; and Wilmington, Delaware. In February, Gordon Rees landed in Louisville after snagging former Stites & Harbison construction partner Angela Richie.

The rationale for the continued expansion, Cominos said, goes back to client demand.

“Clients have shown time and again that they want to consolidate their service provides and that means fewer firms with more abilities,” he said. “We feel we can present a national platform to the marketplace with a number of different service offerings and the capability to handle matters seamlessly throughout the country.”