(Courtesy photo)

Clark Hill has brought on a group of six attorneys in Las Vegas who have been practicing as a litigation boutique since 2015.

The Detroit-based Am Law 200 firm has combined with Gentile Cristalli Miller Armeni Savarese, more than doubling the head count in its Las Vegas office.

Dominic Gentile, Michael Cristalli, Ross Miller and Paola Armeni, all founders of Gentile Cristalli, have joined Clark Hill as members, while Vincent Savarese III, also a co-founder, is joining Clark Hill as senior counsel, along with lawyer Mark Dzarnoski. The boutique was made up of lawyers from Las Vegas firm Gordon Silver, which shuttered in 2015 after 40 years in business.

Donald Ridge, member in charge of Clark Hill's Los Angeles, San Francisco and Las Vegas offices, said the group adds to the firm's white-collar defense capabilities, as well as its commercial litigation and First Amendment practices. He said the firm has handled several white-collar matters across the country since talks with the boutique started, and the Gentile Cristalli lawyers have been helpful in those matters.

The Gentile Cristalli group does a lot of commercial litigation work for casinos, Ridge added, "so it will give us an opportunity to serve some of those clients at a deeper level."

The Las Vegas office now has 10 lawyers, Ridge said, including the new group.

"They're well known in the city, so our folks have personal relationships with them already," he said. "Las Vegas is important because there are a lot of high-wealth individuals there that do work nationally and internationally."

Gentile noted in a statement that Clark Hill has the right geographic footprint and practice mix for its business, which includes clients in Mexico and other locations internationally.

In an interview Wednesday, Gentile said his firm wasn't looking to merge with anyone when it was first approached by a different law firm in October 2017. Once word of those talks got out, others began to approach the boutique, and Clark Hill became a front-runner.

"I just really liked the culture at Clark Hill with regard to supporting the kind of litigation that we are engaged in on a regular basis," he said.

Gentile said he doesn't know how the boutique's rate structure compares to that of Clark Hill, but he isn't planning on changing his own rates. However, he noted, since his practice now has Clark Hill associates to lean on, the overall legal costs for clients will likely decrease.

In terms of what his group adds to the firm, he said their high-end litigation practice has always had a book of business in the seven figures, which will likely grow into the low eight figures with the added support of Clark Hill's existing practices.

"Our cases tend to require us to hire other firms to supply certain kinds of support, and we're not going to have to do that anymore. It'll be far more efficient for our clients," he said.

Gentile is a criminal lawyer and a founder of Nevada Attorneys for Criminal Justice, as well as La Voce, an organization for Italian-Americans in Las Vegas. Cristalli has worked on several high-profile trials, including the trial of Sandy Murphy, who was acquitted on retrial for the alleged murder of casino heir Ted Binion. Miller was previously the secretary of state of Nevada.

Clark Hill has been in a growth mode. In August, the firm brought on multiple groups of lawyers from LeClairRyan, including a four-lawyer labor and employment team in Los Angeles and a five-lawyer group in Texas. The firm expanded considerably in Texas in 2018, merging with midsize firm Strasburger & Price.

According to the National Law Journal's NLJ500 ranking of law firms by head count, Clark Hill grew its head count 45% in 2018, reaching 584 lawyers. The firm said Wednesday that its total head count is now more than 650 across 23 offices.