© 2014 The Texas Lawbook.
By Mark Curriden – (July 15) – Another new week, another national law firm opens in Texas.
Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan announced Monday that it has convinced prominent criminal defense attorney David Gerger to merge his prominent Houston white-collar boutique, Gerger & Clarke, with the 650-lawyer business litigation boutique.
Gerger, who represented Andy Fastow in the Enron case and now defends BP rig supervisor Robert Kaluza in the Deepwater Horizon explosion, will be the managing partner of the Houston office.
“I was very happy at my own boutique law firm, but this is such a great opportunity because I get to team with some of the smartest lawyers in the country,” Gerger said in a phone interview Monday evening. “I met with John Quinn and it didn’t take long for me to see that it was a great fit for us and our clients.”
Gerger, who lawyer and former Houston Chronicle legal writer Mary Flood describes as the “gentlemanly, classical guitar-playing” defense lawyer, said Quinn Emanuel’s size and expertise also provides his legal team and their clients with a depth of resources previously unimaginable.
“Houston is a booming market. As an international litigation firm we felt we needed a presence there,” said John Quinn, the firm’s founder and managing partner. “However, we wanted to make sure we had the right focus and the right people. We found that in David and his team.”
Gerger is considered one of the elite white-collar defense lawyers in the U.S.
A 1985 graduate of the University of Texas School of Law, Gerger clerked for U.S. District Judge Harry Lee Hudspeth of the Western District of Texas and then Judge Jerre Williams of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
After five years as an associate at Vinson & Elkins, Gerger became a federal public defender and then started his own firm.
“David is a great lawyer who is totally devoted to his clients,” legendary trial lawyer Joe Jamail said in a written statement. “If I wanted someone to lead a major case, I’d pick David.”
Shaun Clarke is a graduate of Yale Law School and he clerked for U.S. District Court Judge Lowell Jensen of the Northern District of California. Clarke was an Assistant U.S. Attorney and in private practice in New Orleans before joining Gerger & Clarke.
Quinn Emanuel promotes itself as the world’s largest business litigation and arbitration law firm with 17 global office locations. The firm claims that its lawyers have tried more than 2,311 cases, winning 88.4 percent of them.
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