With the opening of a new Honolulu office, Gordon Rees Scully Mansukhani now has at least one office in every state the U.S.

The San Francisco-based firm, which was founded 45 years ago, now has 68 offices. Managing partner Dion Cominos said Gordon Rees is the first law firm to have offices in all 50 states. Data from ALM Intelligence shows that no other law firm claims to have a physical presence in all 50 states.

“The idea was that so many of our clients are national in scope and have needs throughout the country,” Cominos said. “We thought it would be an important initiative for us to be able to match those needs and be able to represent them wherever they need us to be.”

California- and Hawaii-licensed lawyer James Scadden, a longtime Gordon Rees partner who specializes in environmental and toxic tort work, is going to overseeing the Honolulu office, along with partner Richard Sybert, who also co-chairs the intellectual property practice group.

According to Cominos, his firm's attorneys have long been handling commercial litigation and IP matters for clients in Hawaii, but did not have a physical office there.

Local firms had a lock on Hawaii's legal market until just recently, when legal giant Dentons became the first national, let alone global, firm to set up shop in the state, through a merger last year. A local lawyer actually challenged that expansion, but Hawaii's Supreme Court ruled last month that large firms can practice law in Hawaii, even if not all partners are licensed in the state.

“We observe that the marketplace is undergoing quite a bit of consolidation,” Cominos said, explaining the firm's strategy to have offices in every state.

“It seems that our clients wanted fewer, larger firms handling their matters, they wanted to manage fewer relationships, they wanted consistency in price, in terms of conditions,” Cominos added. “We have so many instances where clients have asked us to handle matters throughout the United States, so we thought, let's make the push open in remaining states we didn't have locations, let's find attorneys in those states. Let's launch a truly national platform with a physical presence in every state.”

Gordon Rees has grown to more than 900 lawyers across its many offices, according to the firm. The firm now has over 120 attorneys in San Francisco, Cominos said, while also having a large presence in San Diego, Los Angeles, Chicago, New York and Philadelphia.

“As the first and only law firm to feature offices in all fifty states, we are poised to meet our clients' needs whenever or wherever they may arise,” name partner Miles Scully, who has been leading the firm's growth efforts, said in a statement. “Our deep bench of talented lawyers coupled with our forward-thinking use of technology enables us to lead the industry in providing efficient and cost effective representation virtually anywhere in the country.”