As Gordon Gates, managing partner at Gates, Wise and Schlosser, is preparing for retirement, the law firm bearing his name is finalizing the details of a merger with another local firm.
Gates, Wise and Schlosser PC and Frazier and Sabin LLP are merging to become Frazier, Sabin and Schlosser. The merger should be complete by June 1, the same day Gates plans to retire from the day-to-day practice of law.
The many already existing connections and relationships between the two firms made the merger a natural move, Scott Sabin said. Sabin and his partner, Rick Frazier, as well as Fred Schlosser, of Gates, Wise and Schlosser, worked together with longtime Springfield criminal defense lawyer Michael Metnick early in their careers and continued to be familiar with each other’s work as they went on to different firms.
“We continued to be friends and have worked together at different times over the past 30 years,” Sabin said. “We’ve had complementary practices, and with Gordon retiring, the opportunity to work together again has come full circle.”
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Retirements in recent years have left both firms with fewer practicing lawyers, which made a merger even more attractive.
“We’ve shared cases, bounced things off each other for 25, 30 years,” Schlosser said. “In light of attrition due to retirement of lawyers, it just made sense from a business standpoint to consolidate the firms.”
With the merger, the new firm will be a “full-service shop,” Schlosser said, offering legal services ranging from criminal defense, personal injury and civil rights to family law and business transactions.
“It really is a general practice in the grand sense,” Sabin said. “We’ll be able to meet the needs of a wide audience.”
Sabin and his team will be vacating their offices in the Myers Building at 1 W. Old State Capitol Plaza, where they have been located for the past 30 years, to move to Gates, Wise and Schlosser’s current offices at 1231 S. Eighth St. Sabin said the firm has maintained the same office space even as attorneys have retired and left the practice, so a move made sense.
“It seemed like an obvious move for us to come over here,” Sabin said.
Sabin, Frazier and two support staff members will be making the transition to the new firm.
In another full-circle connection between the two firms, Riley Hamilton, an associate at Gates, Wise and Schlosser, had been wooed by both Gates, Wise and Schlosser and Frazier and Sabin when he returned to the Springfield market after practicing law in the St. Louis region.
“We were both vying for his attention,” Schlosser said. Hamilton will continue as an associate at the newly merged firm.
Gates also will be staying on as counsel “for a period of time” to ensure a smooth transition, Schlosser said.
Sabin and Schlosser said the merged firm’s goal is to continue to serve clients in the same manner that the two firms have for the past three decades.
“Our goal is to have clients from both firms not recognize much of a change other than on the letterhead,” Schlosser said.