While many firms large and small have looked skeptically at opening new offices with a small number of lawyers, some even opting for a soft entrance to new markets, Texas firm Langley & Banack is taking a different approach. The midsize firm just opened two offices in the Hill Country staffed by Kerrville native Taylor Williams.

Steven Brook, managing partner of the San Antonio firm for more than two decades, said the firm has successfully opened offices in small towns located near San Antonio by hiring lawyers with local connections, like those Williams has in the Hill Country.

"We've been fortunate to have shareholders who have deep roots in the community. We've been fortunate in Eagle Pass, and Carrizo Springs and Karnes City and New Braunfels, and we've looked for some time at a Fredericksburg office and also separately at a Kerrville office," Brook said.

The Hill Country has been on Langley & Banack's radar for a while, Brook said, but the firm finally made the move after it secured a lease of a historic building in Fredericksburg for an office and hired Williams, a litigator who joined the firm as a shareholder in late January. The new shareholder's father is Keith Williams, a state district judge who sits in Fredericksburg and Kerrville but is retiring in April.

Williams had practiced at Gonzalez Chiscano Angulo & Kasson in San Antonio before joining Langley & Banack. He said the timing of the firm's move into the Hill Country made sense for the firm and for him professionally and personally, aside from the greater economic and societal disruption being caused by the coronavirus.

"I really wanted to raise my family in the Hill Country. On the professional level, I already had some business up here and Langley & Banack had some business here," he said.

Gonzalez Chiscano did not provide a comment on Williams' departure, but Brook said the firms have a great relationship and work together.

Both Hill Country offices have been open with support staff since Williams joined the firm in late January, but Williams had not planned to move from San Antonio to Fredericksburg until after the school year ended. But with his children doing online schoolwork, he moved his family this past weekend.

Over the past few years, Williams said, he's been doing more and more work in the Hill Country. He declined to identify clients, but said he does trusts and estates and commercial litigation for family businesses and individuals.

Steven Brook Steven Brook, managing shareholder of Langley & Banack in San Antonio.

Brook said the firm's clients in the Hill Country are business owners and entrepreneurs interested in developing businesses in the area, which is about an hour drive from San Antonio.

The opening of the Fredericksburg and Kerrville offices follow a pattern for Landley & Banack, which Brook founded in 1986 with David Gragg, a shareholder in San Antonio. In 2000, the firm added a Carrizo Springs location when John Petry joined as a shareholder. He has strong ties to the community and his father had also practiced law there, Brook said.

And about a decade ago, after the Eagle Ford Shale exploded with oil and gas activity, Langley & Banack welcomed father-son duo Richard and Clinton Butler to the firm. In acquiring their practice, Butler Attorneys at Law, Langley & Banack was able to open a Karnes City office.

The Eagle Pass office was an outgrowth of the Carrizo Springs office, and New Braunfels is the result of relationships with a couple groups of lawyers, Brook explained.

He said this growth strategy may not work for all regional firms, but the 70-lawyer Langley & Banack is comfortable with it.

"We are not going into communities and trying to put up our sign, saying, 'We're here,'" he said. With many offices in small towns, he said the firm's overhead is low and its billing rates are "fair and reasonable."

As for further expansion with offices in smaller communities, Brook said he has a "couple of  ideas," but nothing more will happen while the economy is suffering and lawyers are working remotely due to stay-home orders intended to slow the spread of the virus.

"I will not see any desire to go to Houston or Dallas. If you take San Antonio, and take a compass and draw a circle around San Antonio, that's where I would look," he said.

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