Cross Gunter Witherspoon & Galchus*

The labor lawyers who founded Cross Gunter Witherspoon & Galchus are pioneers. For one thing, they took a leap of faith when they moved their offices from the building then known as the TCBY Tower to a renovated warehouse in the River Market in 1997.

“We could see the vision because we believe in taking those kinds of steps that are outside the norm and outside the box,” partner Bruce Cross said.

The original partners had split from the disintegrating House Wallace Nelson & Jewell firm and merged with the McGlinchey Stafford Lang firm of New Orleans. But after a half-dozen years of the big-firm pace, they cashed in their partnership interests and set up a shop where “there’s more to life than the almighty dollar,” Cross said.

That’s another way Cross Gunter has been pioneering. Long before the trend showed up in The Wall Street Journal, CGWG was negotiating alternatives to billable hours, using a team approach to work so clients aren’t totally dependent on the availability of one lawyer, and making sure partners and staff have time to make civic contributions.

“Not only do you need to give great quality service to your clients, but you need to be able to make contributions to the community and also need to be a great family person,” Cross said.

In the decade since the firm was founded, CGWG has also pioneered new areas of law as client needs have demanded. “What is labor and employment law has expanded based upon the issues that have expanded. For instance, immigration work – if you look back 10 to 15 years ago, there wasn’t a lot of work in those realms. But now it’s a major issue. “Health issues have also changed dramatically, with various insurance issues, HIPAA, what you can access and what you can’t access. Twenty years ago you really didn’t have a lot of those issues.”

Cross Gunter Witherspoon & Galchus started with about 30 employees. Now it has 48, including 12 partners and 10 associate attorneys.