Gates, Wise & Schlosser, P.C.

Focus and practice areas

Gates, Wise & Schlosser, P.C. covers a wide span of Illinois legal work from its Springfield office. The firm handles criminal defense, DUI, personal injury, business transactions and commercial litigation, real estate, and estate planning that includes trusts, wills and probate.

Alongside those larger categories sit several narrower ones. The firm takes expungements and record sealing, FOID appeals, Sangamon County traffic offenses, and CDL violations and overweight citations.

That last group tells a reader something useful. A firm listing CDL violations and overweight citations by name is signalling that commercial drivers come through the door regularly enough to warrant their own page. The same goes for the Sangamon County traffic listing, which points at steady volume in one county's courtrooms.

Where the work overlaps

Several of these areas feed each other. A DUI conviction affects a commercial driver's license. A criminal record affects a FOID card application. Expungement and sealing then become the route back. A firm carrying all four can follow a client through the sequence with one file.

In my opinion, that combination matters more in practice than the headline practice areas suggest. Clients rarely arrive with a single clean legal problem.

How the team is built

The site names four attorneys. Gordon W. Gates is managing partner and Frederick J. Schlosser is partner. James R. Enlow and Riley Hamilton are associates.

Two of those names appear in the firm's own title. The third name in the title, Wise, does not appear among the currently listed attorneys, which is common for firms that keep a founding name after a partner's departure or retirement.

The firm states that its attorneys have more than 190 years of combined legal practice. Spread across four people, that is a heavy average. It suggests the partners have been practising for a long stretch, with the associates adding fewer years to the total.

Court admissions

The firm states that its attorneys are admitted in Illinois state courts, federal courts, appellate courts and the United States Supreme Court. Supreme Court admission is a procedural bar admission rather than a marker of Supreme Court caseload. It requires a sponsor, a period in good standing at a state bar, and a fee.

Federal and appellate admissions carry more day-to-day weight for a general civil and criminal practice. Federal admission lets the firm handle matters that move out of state court, including certain criminal charges and civil disputes that cross state lines or raise federal questions. Appellate admission means the firm can carry a case past the trial verdict.

Origins and reach

Three attorneys established the firm in 1997 to handle litigation and transactional matters. That original split still describes the practice list today. Criminal defense, personal injury and commercial litigation fall on the litigation side. Real estate, business transactions and estate planning fall on the transactional side.

The firm works with individuals and businesses throughout Central Illinois. Springfield is the state capital and the seat of Sangamon County, so a firm based there sits close to the circuit court, the appellate court for the Fourth District, and the federal courthouse for the Central District of Illinois.

What a client can expect from the named practice areas

The firm's own site gives the practice list without case narratives, so the useful thing a reader can take away is how these matters generally proceed in Illinois.

Expungement and sealing

Illinois treats expungement and sealing as separate remedies. Expungement removes the record. Sealing hides it from most employers while keeping it available to law enforcement. Eligibility turns on the disposition of the original case and on waiting periods that vary by offence. The petition goes to the circuit court in the county where the case was heard, and the State's Attorney and arresting agency get notice and a window to object.

FOID appeals

An Illinois Firearm Owner's Identification card can be revoked or denied by the Illinois State Police. The holder can appeal, either to the State Police director or to the circuit court, depending on the reason for the denial. Certain grounds, including some felony convictions and some mental health records, route the appeal to court rather than to the agency. Relief usually requires the applicant to show the circumstances and their record since.

CDL and overweight matters

Commercial drivers face a separate penalty structure. Federal rules limit a state's ability to offer court supervision to a CDL holder, so the usual disposition that keeps a ticket off a driving record is unavailable. Overweight citations carry fines keyed to the number of pounds over the limit, and the carrier as well as the driver can be exposed.

Probate and estate work

Estate planning documents are drafted in advance. Probate happens afterwards, in the circuit court, with an executor or administrator appointed and creditors given a claim period. A firm that does both sides can draft with an eye to what its own probate lawyers will later file.

What the listing shows and what it leaves open

The firm publishes its practice areas, its attorney roster with titles, its founding year and its court admissions. That is more structured detail than many firm sites of similar size put in front of a reader.

The attorney pages carry names and titles without biographical text, so law schools, admission years and individual case histories are absent from the material available here. A prospective client wanting to know which of the four handles DUI work and which handles commercial closings would need to ask.

As a reviewer, the clearest signal in this listing is the shape of the practice list. A firm with 190 years of combined experience across four attorneys, listing both felony defense and commercial real estate, is describing a general practice with a criminal and traffic emphasis. That is a recognisable model for a county seat, and Springfield has been the firm's base since 1997.

The attorneys and their backgrounds

The individual attorney records fill in detail that the firm's own practice pages leave out. Gordon W. Gates, the managing partner, studied business and economics at the University of Iowa and took his law degree cum laude from Northern Illinois University College of Law in 1986. His work sits on the commercial and transactional side, covering business law, construction, real estate, commercial litigation, and bankruptcy.

Frederick J. Schlosser came to law from finance. He holds a finance degree from the University of Notre Dame and worked as an investment officer before earning his J.D. cum laude from Southern Illinois University School of Law in 1992. He spent time as an associate at a Springfield firm and then co-founded the current practice in 1997. Schlosser represents plaintiffs in personal injury claims and defends clients in state and federal criminal matters, including DUI and white collar charges. A background in investment work gives an injury practice a useful eye for the numbers behind a damages figure.

James R. Enlow, an associate, earned a political science degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a law degree from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale in 1988. His practice reaches across criminal law, probate, employment law, real estate, estate planning, and bankruptcy. Away from the office he has sat on the board of the Prairie Art Alliance and served as past president and vice president of the Land of Lincoln Down Syndrome Society, which places him in Springfield's civic life beyond the courtroom.

Riley Hamilton holds a law degree from Saint Louis University School of Law. Hamilton works on business and real estate matters, with construction law part of the mix. That focus overlaps with Gordon Gates's practice, so the firm keeps two attorneys on its commercial and property files.

Matching a problem to a lawyer

Read together, the four bios answer a question the practice list alone cannot. Schlosser carries the criminal and DUI work along with personal injury, while Enlow adds criminal and probate capacity. Business and real estate files sit with Gates and Hamilton, and both handle construction. Estate planning and probate fall to Enlow. A prospective client can now point a specific matter at a named lawyer.

Construction work

Construction is worth a separate note, since two of the four attorneys name it and the firm's public practice list does not carry it as a heading. In Central Illinois this work runs from contract drafting and mechanics lien claims through to payment disputes on a project. A practice with both a partner and an associate in the area can stay with a build from the paperwork stage into a fight over money if one starts.