Ten years ago this week, Kirkland & Ellis upended the Texas corporate law market but no one knew it at the time. Using cramped rental office space shared with a divorce lawyer above Lone Star Taco in downtown Houston, Andy Calder, William Benitez, John Pitts, Rhett Van Syoc and Kyle Watson officially launched Kirkland’s Houston office on April 22, 2014. Former colleagues called them crazy and predicted the Kirkland model would never work in a genteel environment such as Texas. But by the end of the first day, the Kirkland team in Houston had 30 private equity deals to handle.
“From Day 1, we had more deals than we had people,” Benitez said.
A decade later, Kirkland has 414 lawyers in Houston, Dallas and Austin. The firm last year made $200 million more than any law firm in Texas has ever made in one year. Through the eyes of those who were there at the beginning, this is the story of how Kirkland became the highest revenue generating and most profitable corporate law firm in Texas history. And firm leaders are promising they are not finished growing.