Austin aviation trial lawyer Mike Slack was having drinks at a hotel bar in New Orleans with Dallas plaintiff’s attorney Mike Guajardo when he popped the question.
“Have you ever thought about hooking up with another firm?” Slack asked.
“No,” Guajardo responded.
Eighteen months later, the leaders of their two firms – Slack Davis Sanger and Guajardo & Marks – announced Tuesday that their two shops are merging to create a 10-lawyer plaintiff’s practice that will have offices in Austin, Dallas and Fort Worth.
Mike Guajardo
“Mike and Greg [Marks] are excellent lawyers and there’s a lot of compatibility between our law firms,” Slack told The Texas Lawbook in an interview Tuesday. “By combining resources, we can more effectively and efficiently assist clients in catastrophic personal injury cases and achieve the best possible outcomes with the same integrity and compassion that we’ve stressed since our founding.”
The merged law firm will continue under the name Slack Davis Sanger. The firm’s support staff is about 30 people strong.
In a written statement, Guajardo said he and Marks are excited about the combination because it provides them with “expanded legal, technical and financial resources” to help their clients.
In addition to the merger, Guajardo is planning to shift a significant part of his practice to Austin and will spend a considerable amount of time in Austin .
Greg Marks
Slack and his firm have been involved in some of the most significant aviation lawsuits in recent history. They are currently representing victims who died this past August in the helicopter crash in the Black Gap Wildlife Management Area in Brewster County. They also represent victims in the June 2019 airplane crash at the Addison Airport that killed the pilot, co-pilot and eight passengers. The case is pending in Dallas District Judge Tonya Parker’s court.
Slack Davis is also the home to Paul Sweeney, who is a nationally recognized legal expert on complex medical and scientific issues. Sweeney, Slack and Guajardo are all past presidents of the Texas Trial Lawyers Association.
Guajardo & Marks has a strong reputation for successfully representing victims in trucking and defective product cases.
Slack said that the COVID-19 pandemic “significantly slowed” the two firms’ efforts to merge sooner, but he expects the transition to be completed on Jan. 1. He said the firm, despite the elimination of nearly all jury trials since March, has done well.
“We’ve had as good a year in 2020 as we’ve had the past five or six years,” he said. “Our team had adapted nicely. I was one of those people slow to get my head around the notion of people working at home. But our metrics show that our people have been 35% more productive working at home.
“This has been a big eye opener for me and I am now a proponent of people working at home if they can,” he said. “It has been a wonderful educational experience that I would have preferred to have gotten another way than because of a pandemic.”