Leonard, Street and Deinard today announced plans for expansion into North Dakota with the opening of a new law office in Bismarck. The Bismarck office will be the firm’s fifth location nationwide and the fourth in the Upper Midwest, joining the firm’s Minneapolis, Mankato and St. Cloud offices regionally and its Washington, D.C., office nationally.

“Leonard, Street and Deinard has a long relationship with, and connection to, North Dakota, both personally and professionally,” said firm President Lowell Stortz. “While we are excited to have a formal presence in the Bismarck area, our work serving clients in that area is nothing new.”

Attorneys at the firm can trace back their relationships with North Dakota-based clients more than 20 years. “As the number of clients we serve in the region has grown over the years, and as their businesses have grown, we have grown with them,” said Stortz. The firm currently offers legal services to North Dakota-based clients in the areas of energy, employment and labor law, health law, construction law, corporate, financial services, employee benefits, trust and estate planning, and litigation, among others.

Jannelle Steger Combs will join the office as a shareholder with a primary focus on conducting oil and gas title examinations, advising on title (ownership) rights and preparing drilling, division, mortgage and acquisition title opinions.  Prior to joining Leonard, Street and Deinard, Combs was the owner of Steger Law Office in Bismarck and Fargo, where she regularly prepared oil and gas drilling title opinions. She also served as chief deputy clerk for the North Dakota Supreme Court. A graduate of the University of North Dakota Law School and a rural Wahpeton, North Dakota, native, she is admitted to practice in Minnesota, North Dakota and Wyoming.

Supporting Combs is associate J. Scott Childs, who comes to Leonard, Street and Deinard from the Sadler Law Firm in Houston, Texas. Prior to practicing law, Childs worked as a landman for Frazier Oil Properties and was an energy and climate consultant for the British Consulate-General in Houston. He earned his law degree from the University of Tennessee College of Law and an L.L.M. in energy, environment and natural resources law from the University of Houston Law Center. He is an active member of the Institute for Energy Law and the Association of International Petroleum Negotiators.

Combs and Childs will become part of the firm’s national energy practice, working hand-in-glove with energy attorneys in Minneapolis and Washington, D.C.

In recent years, mineral resource experts have estimated that the Bakken shale formation, which is in the Williston Basin that covers 200,000 square miles in North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana and the neighboring provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba in Canada, may potentially hold more than 600 billion barrels of oil between its rock layers several miles beneath the earth’s surface. Experts are estimating that in the future, the Bakken formation could produce 500,000 to 1,500,000 barrels of oil per day. If true, that could significantly increase U.S. oil production and potentially create new business opportunities for many of the firm’s longtime clients in North Dakota.

Leonard, Street and Deinard has a dozen attorneys who are licensed and regularly practice in North Dakota. In addition, a number of the firm’s attorneys grew up in North Dakota and attended the University of North Dakota Law School.  “We have a long-term, proven and vested commitment to the success of North Dakota’s business community, and that of the broader region,” Stortz said. “Our new Bismarck office represents the logical and natural next stage of that commitment.”