Dallas employment law expert Emily Stout on Friday moved her practice from Clouse Brown to Crawford, Wishnew & Lang.
Stout’s lateral move makes her the eighth attorney to join CWL since the litigation boutique opened its doors in February 2018.
The firm’s named partners, Trey Crawford, Dave Wishnew and Michael Lang, departed at that time from their previous firm, Gruber Hail Johansen Hank. They brought associates Ali Ohlinger and T.J. Jones with them.
Last April, former colleague Jason Weber joined CWL as a partner when Gruber Hail announced that its remaining lawyers had dissolved their partnership. A couple of months later, associate Haleigh Jones joined from Foley Gardere.
Wishnew and Stout have been close friends since they first litigated a noncompete case against each other nearly 10 years ago. Since then, they have been co-counsel in a few cases, so it gave Wishnew certainty that Stout would be a good fit when the time came for the firm to add another senior partner.
“We are a family – we row in the same direction, we rise together and we fall together,” Wishnew told The Texas Lawbook. “For every person we bring in, Trey, Michael and I believe everyone has to be on board with it from the top down. They can’t just be a fit business-wise; they have to be a fit in our values, how we practice and how we treat people.”
Since Wishnew has known Stout as a “friend, adversary and co-counsel,” he said he jumped “at the opportunity to practice with her” when he found out she was interested in joining CWL.
“She’s just that type of person that you respect and care about, and she does things the right way,” Wishnew said.
Stout told The Lawbook the feeling is mutual.
“It was the opportunity to go practice with people I know and respect so when it came up, it was attractive,” Stout said. “It was an opportunity to try something different with people that I’ve known for a long time.”
Beyond noncompete cases, Stout’s employment practice heavily involves advising corporate and individual clients on executive disability claims and their responsibilities with meeting federal laws such as ADA and FMLA. She also always has at least one FLSA overtime case on her to-do list.
Last year, Stout was on the trial team that scored a $3.7 million jury verdict in Tarrant County for an executive pastor and his wife who alleged the 7,000-member Crossroads Christian Church, where they had served for more than 20 years, violated an agreement to provide them supplemental retirement benefits.
Currently, she is in the early stages of a “brewing gender discrimination case” in a “very male-dominated industry.”
She said she has been receiving more discrimination-related calls lately from female clients, including equal pay issues.
“As the number of women increase in executive positions, I think they’re kind of tired of the way things have been in the past and are looking to effectuate change,” Stout said.
In joining her new firm, Stout said she is excited to “continue to develop new client relationships” while dipping her toes into a mentor role by “helping some of the associates grow in their practice.”
She said she also looks forward to joining a firm that practices a wide range of business litigation beyond employment law.
As out-of-state firms continue to get their slice of the Dallas legal market by way of mergers, Stout says she envisions CWL as a firm that serves clients in “many different areas of the law” but is “small enough to give highly-personalized service… at prices that are attractive to clients.”