For the second time in 2018, Shook, Hardy & Bacon is expanding its operations on the West Coast, this time by bringing on class action expert Andrew Trask as of counsel in San Francisco.

Trask, who joined the firm two weeks ago, will be based in San Francisco but split his time between the Bay Area and Orange County, California. He previously worked in the London office of McGuireWoods, where he served as co-chairman of the firm's class action group.

“My practice has always been very class actions,” said Trask, adding that he will continue to represent clients in aggregate litigation and class actions in areas such as products liability, data privacy and consumer fraud.

Trask has 20 years' experience in class action cases. Before joining McGuireWoods in 2008, he worked as a counsel in the Washington, D.C., office of O'Melveny & Myers, where he worked closely with of counsel Brian Anderson. The two litigators partnered up and co-wrote “The Class Action Playbook,” a class action litigation manual published by LexisNexis.

“It offers a great opportunity to deep dive into what I was doing anyway,“ said Trask about his class action guide.

Other tomes co-authored by the litigation veteran include “Betting the Company: Complex Negotiation Strategies in Law and Business,” which he wrote with longtime friend Andrew DeGuire, now vice president of strategy transformation and advancement at The Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Co. That book was published by Oxford University Press.

Trask said he was attracted to Shook because of the firm's focus “in the class action arena.” Shook, whose roots are in Kansas City, Missouri, earned a reputation for defending tobacco companies, but Trask said he was impressed by the firm's litigators that worked on class action cases he was already involved in and the opportunity to collaborate with them on other matters.

“I am a lawyer who has developed a reputation of not settling very often,” said Trask, noting that companies have increasingly been the target of class action suits due to the rise of privacy and data-related breaches. His goal, Trask explained, is “to dispose of class actions early and, if they progress, to not only win on the merits, but to keep a case from becoming a giant class action.”

Federal courts in the Bay Area are seeing more class actions in the data breach and privacy realm, as well as consumer fraud, products liability and securities, Trask said. In addition to his class action practice, Trask has defended mass tort cases involving data breaches, financial regulations, government investigations and patent misuse cases.

“We are very excited to be adding such a prominent class-action litigator,” said a statement announcing Trask's hire by Shook's San Francisco office managing partner Amir Nassihi. “Andy's very well-known nationally for his strategic thinking and class litigation expertise, and he strengthens our already deep class action litigation practice. Andy is already working with our class action group co-chairs, Tristan Duncan and Holly Smith, on swiftly integrating his practice here.”

Shook's San Francisco office, which opened in 1998, earlier this year brought on veteran trial lawyer Michael Healy, a former chairman of now-defunct Sedgwick. With Trask's addition, Shook's Bay Area base now has 29 lawyers. The firm, which saw its gross revenue rise in 2017, has also been busy expanding elsewhere.

Last week Shook hired Ricardo Ampudia, a partner with International Dispute Resources LLC, as counsel for its arbitration and litigation group in Miami. The firm also bolstered its 6-year-old office in Philadelphia in March after landing former Morgan, Lewis & Bockius litigator Thomas Sullivan.