(Reuters) - Everyone is waiting to see who Thomas Clare sues next.

In a pair of lawsuits seeking $1.3 billion a pop, the defamation lawyer, ex-Kirkland & Ellis partner and Clare Locke co-founder has made headlines this month suing attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell on behalf Dominion Voting Systems Corp.

But Powell and Giuliani weren't the only ones spreading false conspiracy theories that Dominion and Democrats stole the 2020 election from Donald Trump, Clare said.

"We're going to look at all the other individuals that played a role in spreading these falsehoods," Clare said. "And we're also looking at media companies, because these folks could not have acted alone."

VIDEO-Tom Clare promises "more to come" in Dominion defamation cases: https://reut.rs/2Nwqz2c

Clare and his wife, fellow litigator Libby Locke, left Kirkland in 2014 to found Alexandria, Virginia-based Clare Locke. The firm now has half a dozen partners and about the same number of associates.

Clare talked with Reuters Tuesday about how he got into his defamation practice, his firm's first really big case, and how they calculated Dominion's $1.3 billion in damages. The conversation below has been edited for clarity and brevity.

REUTERS: How did you get involved in this kind of law? Did you always know that you wanted to do this?

THOMAS CLARE: No. Like I suspect for many lawyers, it was the product of an early experience that I had. When I started my legal career, I was an associate at a big law firm, and worked on all sorts of commercial litigation matters. And one of the matters that I worked on very early in my career was a defamation case. It required me to learn all the ins and outs of the law and really dig into it, and we got a terrific result in that case.... So when that matter was over, I continued to take on more and more of those cases ... and that's kind of what led me to now doing it full time.

REUTERS: What would you say was your first big defamation case?

TC: The case that really, I think, put us on the map on a national stage was the case that we filed against Rolling Stone magazine. We represented the dean of students at the University of Virginia, who was falsely accused by Rolling Stone of having covered up a really horrible gang rape that supposedly took place on campus and was supposedly reported to her and it was false. And we took that case to trial and got a jury verdict. And that story, and that lawsuit got a lot of national attention.

REUTERS: Kirkland is also where you met your wife and fellow founder, Libby Locke? Is that right?

TC: Yes, she was also a partner at Kirkland. And we recognized that this practice that we had, and she worked with me on a lot of those cases, we recognized there was a tremendous market opportunity for a boutique defamation firm. Because these large law firms have client relationships with most of the large media organizations.... And so we were turning away a lot of that work, and we recognized this market opportunity, and that's what started. The firm started with just a handful of us from Kirkland. But now we've grown to be 12 lawyers.

REUTERS: I'm aware that you're representing Dominion Voting Systems and with pending litigation there's only so much you can say. Is Dominion an old client of yours or are they a relatively new?

TC: Relatively new. We've been representing Dominion in the aftermath of all of these allegations that have been made about them, of course, in the 2020 election. And we expect they'll be a long-term client. We filed these two lawsuits, and there are more to come. But they're a great company. They're exactly the type of company that we want to represent, and that they are a really good fit for our practice, because they have been incredibly damaged by these false statements that were made about them, and made by individuals, but also made in the media.

REUTERS: A lot of news coverage of the Dominion lawsuits has focused on the dollar figure. It's to my understanding you're seeking $652 million in compensatory damages and that same amount as a punitive penalty. How did you arrive at that number?

TC: It really highlights one of the challenges in this practice, because what we are seeking to compensate our clients for is the damage that they've suffered from a false statement. And that's a tough exercise because your reputation is priceless. How do you put a price on what your reputation is worth? But we have to, we have to try. And so one of the things that we do is try to break that down for juries and explain to them the different buckets of damage that when you've had an injury to your reputation, how that manifests itself.

In the case of Dominion, what we did was look at those buckets and try to make some estimates, given what we know now, and knowing that this damage to the company will continue to evolve over the next couple of years.... And we will, of course, update them as the lawsuit goes on. It could be could be far greater than that, but since we have to put a damage figure in our complaint, we put forward that good-faith estimate.