Munck Wilson Mandala is staking out new ground in Fort Worth with a familiar face to many of the city’s tech and life sciences companies leading the charge.
Veteran general counsel Quintin Cassady, who spent more than two decades in-house at Galderma, has joined the Dallas-based firm as a partner to launch its Fort Worth office. For a market that has long sent its most complex life sciences, IP and tech matters to Dallas, New York and other hubs, Cassady’s arrival signals an attempt to keep more of that legal work in Fort Worth, while attempting to tap into the city’s growing innovation economy.
Munck Wilson, with existing offices in Austin, Dallas, Houston, Waco, Los Angeles, South Florida, Orlando and South Korea, grew its Texas lawyer headcount last year by nearly 20 percent to 73, according to the Lawbook 50. The new office led by Cassady will “probably have six to eight partners by the end of the year” and a “second wave of people” in early 2027, he said.
An Oklahoma native who has lived in Fort Worth for more than three decades, Cassady built his reputation over 21 years in a variety of legal leadership roles for Galderma’s North American operations, where he oversaw significant pharmaceutical and IP litigation, M&A and a portfolio of dermatology products. He later served as GC of New Jersey-based Modern Meadow, guiding its legal strategy on licensing, joint ventures, IP and more during a pivotal growth phase for the biotech company.
Now, as Fort Worth accelerates development around Alliance and downtown, Cassady says the timing is perfect for a local platform with national technology and IP depth.
Backed by Munck Wilson’s AI and tech‑focused bench of lawyers and led by a longtime resident of Fort Worth, the new office, as Cassady sees it, will be a GC‑minded shop that can manage complex transactions and disputes while helping high‑growth North Texas companies avoid the classic trap of “doing the deal” before asking whether it’s the right one.
The Texas Lawbook caught up with Cassady to talk about his move back to a law firm, why it made sense to do it now and more.
The Texas Lawbook: Fort Worth is a sophisticated business market, but in many respects, smaller in specific legal practice areas. What gap or unmet need convinced you this new office could add something distinctive rather than just more capacity? Why was now the right time to join Munck in planting the flag for this new office?
Quintin Cassady: Fort Worth is now the 10th largest city in the country. It also has a far smaller base of partners at law firms than larger cities, for example.
What makes the timing really good is the high-tech growth, especially around Alliance, as well as what’s happening with UNT Health Fort Worth and all their business incubator activities, plus there is Texas A&M’s growing campus downtown.
As a result, there is a significant amount of entrepreneurial activity in Fort Worth that probably wasn’t always present. There are a lot of growth-stage companies now operating in here and relocating here.
Fort Worth still has plenty of real estate to grow and expand. It’s cheaper to set up shop here than it is in Dallas, Houston and certainly Austin. Now’s the right time.
As a former in-house lawyer, I’ve been a client of Munck’s for 20 years or so, including at dermatology pharmaceuticals giant Galderma. Munck has handled a lot of high-stakes patent litigation for them and Modern Meadow, the New Jersey biotech where I managed their legal out of my home office here in Fort Worth, and a lot of M&A transactions.
Why did I go to a firm based in Dallas like Munck, or to some of the New York firms I used in the past, rather than to a firm in Fort Worth? That’s because the city’s legal community doesn’t have some of the life sciences or the AI and technology expertise, so they don’t have the patent litigation capabilities that are sometimes required.
That’s just not what the core businesses in Fort Worth were historically. But now, and especially in the last couple of years, that is where a lot of business is going, and so a lot of legal work was being sent out of Fort Worth. It’s going to Dallas, New York and elsewhere.
What we are going to bring to Fort Worth is the ability to use local lawyers and utilize our national strengths in some of these specialty areas.
The Lawbook: Thecapacity to handle that work in Fort Worth now opens a door for Munck, because sophisticated industry needs are being met by other firms and their out-of-town offices. Is having someone available locally a competitive advantage?
Cassady: I know it personally, because when I was at Galderma, I did not use Fort Worth firms. Being a Fort Worth person for so many years, that’d been my preference to use a local law firm, and a lot of the GCs in town would rather use Fort Worth law firms. They just don’t have the capabilities that we’re going to bring in key areas. We’re going to refer a lot of work to local firms, too.
The Lawbook: When you imagine the Fort Worth office five years from now, what do you hope people in the market say it’s uniquely known for?
Cassady: Our ability to manage complex transactions, to address life sciences and all manner of intellectual property areas. I’m bringing a general counsel perspective, and I think that’s a little bit unique in Fort Worth, because the companies as clients value that expertise.
Also, there’s very little lateral movement in Fort Worth. Lawyers here spend almost their entire careers at their law firms, and that’s not a bad thing.
The Lawbook: How do your civic roles, like chairing the UNT Health Science Center Foundation, shape how you think about building a law office that’s embedded in Fort Worth rather than just located here?
Cassady: Rome wasn’t built in a day, and I’ve been on the job about three weeks, and being part of the community in a meaningful way is a personal objective of mine. Munck Wilson has been very supportive. I’m on the board of the UNT Health Science Center Foundation, and the firm will get involved in supporting many of their events. We’re going to get involved with some of the local hospital systems.
I think some law firms have become, and I hate to use this word, but they’ve become a little complacent in Fort Worth. They have institutional clients and maybe they are taken for granted a little bit. We’re not trying to displace our friends at other firms here, but we want to shake up the complacency that we think is in the Fort Worth legal community right now.
The Lawbook: After decades in-house, what did you feel was missing from the outside counsel you hired, something you now want to do differently as a law firm partner and head of this new office?
Cassady: Some of the specialty areas that are not currently being offered in Fort Worth, and some of the targeted lawyers we’re recruiting have some skillsets in those areas, but not necessarily the support of their law firms to go out and meet with new clients. Or even expand that business with the current clients that we’re going to bring to those people.
I have seen really good client service from the law firms I’ve used over the years as an in-house lawyer, and I’ve seen less than good, so I really feel like I’m going to be able to help mentor the team we bring on to help them understand exactly the type of client service we’re going to provide.
The Lawbook: What does your timeline look like for growing the team?
Cassady: The best-case scenario is we’ll probably have six to eight partners by the end of the year. We may be in temporary offices. In a perfect world, we’ll have a great holiday party in our new office. We have RFPs out to three different landlords. One of my personal preferences, and I think that of Munck Wilson, is going to be a build-out. We think we could have that done by the end of the year. Then we envision a second wave of people, probably after the first of the year.
The Lawbook: For fast-growing private companies in Fort Worth, what are the one or two strategic legal mistakes you see most often that you hope this new office can help them avoid early?
Cassady: One of the biggest ones is growing too fast, too quickly. That’s where I think my in-house experience, and maybe the people we bring on, come into play. The one thing many outside lawyers lack is real-world experience and common sense about how a business operates. The ability to go sit in and advise with full confidence, built over many years advising boards on the best next steps.
Plus, everybody wants to grow so fast these days. Your private equity investors are always pushing you because they’re just looking for an exit. But sometimes you’re better off providing a strategy that lets you move a little slower, so the business comes to you, not the other way around.
That’s probably the area that I’ve seen over time is the biggest mistake: jumping into transactions for the sake of doing a deal, for example. If you’re an M&A lawyer at a firm, your whole purpose in life is to close that transaction. It’s never to say, “Hey, is this really a good idea?” And that’s one of the things that businesses need to consider: does it make sense to pursue this deal?
Don’t get me wrong, if it’s a good deal, do it. But there’s more to it than the transaction itself.
The Lawbook: Fort Worth is a tight‑knit, relationship‑driven market, more so than most. How will that local culture influence the way you hire and develop lawyers for this office?
Cassady: I’ve spent enough time in Dallas, Houston, Austin and various Texas markets on transactions or whatever over the years, but Fort Worth is different than any of those markets that we’re talking about. It is very much a “real” relationship market, and that’s why I’m excited about it. The people we’re recruiting are locals who will be the face of the firm, even as we leverage the expertise of an AI team in Los Angeles and an IP prosecution team in Dallas. I have talked to a couple of people in Fort Worth that we are not going to continue pursuing, not because they’re bad people or anything like that, but I just didn’t feel like they had the right relationship fit for what we’re trying to accomplish.
We’re not going in trying to undermine or a bunch of people at the other firms in Fort Worth. We’re going to come in as a complementary partner to keep a lot of business in town and be a referral source to those firms for the things that are more core to their practices that we aren’t necessarily going to have, but our clients need.