Crawford Wishnew Lang has signed labor and employment partner Camille Avant, the Dallas-based litigation boutique announced this week.
Avant, a SMU Dedman School of Law graduate, has practiced the last decade-plus with the employment law experts at Clouse Brown/Clouse Dunn. She said that “although the experience she gained is unmatched, growth requires change.
“I had a desire to make a name for myself in this market. I saw no better way to do that than to join an up-and-coming firm that has done an exceptional job making a name for themselves over the past four years,” said Avant, who is the fifth partner and 11th attorney at Crawford Wishnew Lang.
“As CWL continues to grow, I can grow with them and establish myself through my own qualifications and not just the expertise of my peers.”
Avant is the second partner to join CWL from Clouse Brown. Emily Stout moved in 2019 and helped recruit Avant.
“We began monitoring her career, watching her success from afar, and hoping that, when the time was right, we would have the opportunity to persuade her to join CWL,” name partner Dave Wishnew told The Texas Lawbook.
“Camille has all five tools. She is a dynamic lawyer with a proven track record handling high-end litigation. She’s an expert in employment law, with a diverse background in other areas of litigation on both plaintiff and defense sides. Just as important, Camille is an amazing person who treats everyone the right way.”
A few notable matters Avant has recently handled include:
- Obtaining an arbitration award and subsequent judgment for a health management solutions company on claims of breach of contract, misappropriation and breach of fiduciary duty against a former executive. The former executive was also the wife of the founder and CEO of the health management company and was countersuing for gender discrimination and harassment, but her claims were dismissed. Although this was an employment and commercial litigation case, Avant was heavily involved with the family law attorneys of the founder and former executive as they were going through a divorce and disputing the ownership of the health management solutions company.
- Being part of the team that achieved a $3.7 million jury verdict against a mega-church for breach of contract and failure to pay supplemental retirement benefits to the church’s executive pastor and the executive assistant.
- Represented a global recruitment firm in a multi-litigation matter, resulting in two lawsuits in the Northern District of Texas, an arbitration before the American Arbitration Association (AAA) in Dallas and an arbitration before the AAA in Tampa, Florida. The global recruitment firm was suing its former employees and their new employer, another global recruiting firm, for breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty, misappropriation and tortious interference.
Avant says forensic collection and analysis will continue to be an emerging trend in employment and commercial litigation, especially with more employees working from home.
“Before, if an employee wanted to steal information from his or her employer, he or she practically had to walk out the front door with it,” she said. “Nowadays, with smart phones, cloud storage, and little separation between work and personal devices employees are walking away with company confidential and proprietary information at high rates.
“Getting an attorney who understands the forensic arena and the evolving trends in these situations is essential.”