Gebauer's documented formation took place in the Philadelphia region. His undergraduate and legal education both took place at Villanova University, located in Villanova, Pennsylvania, about twelve miles from Center City Philadelphia.
The law firm where he is currently based, Post & Schell, P.C., is also headquartered in Philadelphia. Its history in that city shapes the regional legal setting in which his later practice developed.
Villanova University was founded in 1842 by the Augustinian Order. It traces its origins to St. Augustine's Church in Philadelphia, which the Augustinians founded in 1796, and to the parish school St. Augustine's Academy, established in 1811. The institution began as the Augustinian College of Villanova and achieved university status on November 18, 1953.
Gebauer earned a Bachelor of Arts from Villanova in 1978, when the university had been fully coeducational for a decade. The university's 1979 mission statement reaffirmed its Catholic, Augustinian character and its commitment to the liberal arts.
He also studied at the Villanova University School of Law, where he received a Juris Doctor. The law school is one of the university's academic divisions, and it was established in 1953, the same year the institution became a university. He was admitted to the Pennsylvania bar in 1981.
Gebauer's career is rooted in the practice of law. He was admitted to the Pennsylvania bar in 1981 and to the New York and New Jersey bars in 1982. Admission to a state bar authorizes a lawyer to practice in that state's courts, so these admissions defined the jurisdictions in which he practiced.
He worked as a partner of Resident Members, a firm in which he held an ownership and management role as a partner.
Gebauer is currently Senior Counsel at Post & Schell, P.C., where he works in the firm's Casualty Litigation and Professional Liability departments. Founded in 1968, the firm began as a Philadelphia insurance defense practice and grew into a multi-practice firm with more than 50 practice groups and eight offices.
His practice centers on negligence defense, with particular concentration on medical and professional malpractice, products liability, premises liability, and commercial transportation liability. He represents companies and individuals in manufacturing, health care, hospitality, entertainment, and trucking industries, and he has tried more than 80 jury trials to verdict in federal and state courts in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New York. He is based in the firm's New Jersey office in Mount Laurel.
