Gimbel, Reilly, Guerin & Brown, LLP

What the firm handles

The practice covers a wide span for a firm of its size. Criminal defense and white collar criminal investigations sit at the center of the work. Around them, the firm takes on DUI and OWI cases, personal injury from car, truck and motorcycle crashes, and professional licensing defense.

There is a full civil side as well. That includes business and commercial litigation, divorce and child custody, estate planning and probate, and real estate. So a client facing a criminal charge and a client planning an estate can both find help under the same roof.

The firm represents both individuals and businesses. That dual focus shows up across the areas above, from a single person charged in a licensing matter to a company caught in a commercial dispute.

Roots in the prosecutor's office

The firm was founded in 1968 by Franklyn M. Gimbel. Before starting it, he served as a federal prosecutor for the Eastern District of Wisconsin. His brother, Stanley P. Gimbel, joined the following year.

The early group leaned toward former government lawyers. Richard E. Reilly and Thomas E. Brown had both been federal prosecutors. D. Michael Guerin had worked as a special agent for the Department of Justice. In my opinion, that shared background helps explain why criminal and white collar work became such a strong thread through the firm's history.

Those four names, along with Gimbel, sit in the firm's title today. For a reader, that continuity is easy to trace: the people who built the practice are still the people it is named for.

How the team is built

The firm now lists 16 attorneys. It has grown in steady steps rather than one rush. Denis J. Regan, Patrick J. Knight and Raymond M. Dall'Osto joined in the 1980s. Jason D. Luczak came aboard in the 2000s.

More recent moves follow the same pattern. Joshua L. Gimbel joined as a partner after twenty-five years at another Milwaukee firm. Adam J. Schleis and Zak Wroblewski came in as associates in 2022. Nicole M. Masnica was promoted to partner in 2023. So the roster mixes lawyers with decades at the firm and others just starting out.

A few of the names

Kristin A. Leaf is a partner in the family law department. She earned her J.D. from William Mitchell College of Law and holds a B.A. in philosophy, with an emphasis in English, from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She began her legal career in 2008 with the Law Office of Frank J. Schiro and has worked on family law matters since.

Andrew W. Flood took a different route in. He studied political science at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, then earned his J.D. from Marquette University Law School. During law school he clerked in criminal law for the Honorable Jennifer R. Dorow and worked as a research assistant on constitutional law and interpretation.

Joshua J. Konopacki is one of the newer arrivals. He earned his law degree from Marquette University Law School in 2024. Thomas E. Brown, by contrast, goes back to the firm's early years and came from the federal prosecutor's office. Together they show how wide the range of experience runs.

Reach across Wisconsin

The office sits in downtown Milwaukee, yet the work is not fixed to the city. The firm serves clients across Wisconsin, including Waukesha, Madison and Green Bay. For someone outside Milwaukee who still wants a Milwaukee firm, that wider reach can matter.

The location keeps the team in one place rather than spread across branches. A reader can read that either way. It can mean a compact group that knows each other's work, or a single point of contact for a case that touches more than one part of the state.

What stands out to a reviewer

A few things shape how I read this firm. It has practiced for more than 55 years, which is a long run by any measure. Its history ties closely to former prosecutors and a former federal agent, and its criminal and white collar work grew straight out of that.

The mix of practice areas is broad, and yet the roster stays fairly small at 16 attorneys. As a reviewer, I take that to mean clients deal with a compact team rather than a large one, with named partners attached to specific departments such as family law.

What the public pages do not show, the firm does not claim. There are no case figures or rankings in the material reviewed here. So this account stays with what the firm states about itself: its long history and the kinds of matters it takes on. For a directory built on evidence over advertising, that plain record is a reasonable place for a prospective client to start.