Steffen Horlacher was preparing for work 24 years ago when he saw the news on TV that a plane had crashed into one of the World Trade Center towers in New York City. Then, minutes later, a second plane struck the other 110-story tower.
“It took a while for me to digest the news,” he said. “But I knew I needed to get to work.”
Just 10 days earlier, American Airlines had promoted Horlacher from foreign legal advisor to the position of junior attorney, which he calls “the best day of my career.”
When he arrived at American’s headquarters an hour after learning of the terrorist attacks, he said “everyone was in shock.”
“Our offices look out over DFW Airport and the runways, and it was a ghost town,” he told The Texas Lawbook in an interview this week. “There was no activity at all.”
But there was still work to be done, with 9/11-related issues getting piled onto his normal legal work.
In the months that followed 9/11, Horlacher handled his first major transaction — a critical but creative deal involving two business partners, jet maker Boeing and Australian airline Qantas. The Sydney-headquartered carrier desperately needed new airplanes because its biggest hometown competitor, Tasman Pacific Airlines, had gone bankrupt and Qantas needed aircraft to handle the additional travelers. But Boeing was backed up on orders and predicted it would take a couple years to meet Qantas’ order for new planes.
Horlacher developed a transaction that allowed Qantas to assume possession of 15 new airliners American had ordered from Boeing but did not need right away because of the drop in U.S. air travel right after Sept. 11.
“There were many intricate details that needed to be worked out, but it ended up financially beneficial for both sides,” he said.
During his 26 years at American, Horlacher played a critical role helping American navigate monumental events including 9/11, the airline’s 2011 bankruptcy, the 2014 merger with US Airways and the Covid-19 pandemic. Along the way, he has handled countless new business initiatives, alliances and codeshare agreements with partners and contractual relationships that facilitate American’s day-to-day operations and catering agreements with vendors.
“The joint venture with British Airways in 2010 was truly a milestone agreement in my career,” he said. “It required many trips to London for meetings. We had tried three times before to get it done, but this time it was successful and it became the model agreement for joint ventures with other airlines in Europe.”
“In the airline industry there never — or hardly ever — is a dull moment,” Horlacher said. “Issues can come at you in any number, at any time, from any side. If you like to plan out your work day or work week, the airline industry is not for you. Needless to say, I like that.”
Horlacher handles all of American’s regional flying agreements with its regional carriers such as Republic and SkyWest. He recently led the legal department’s negotiations with motorcoach carrier Landline, which allowed American to become the first airline to offer service to all fifty states. He served as the lead commercial legal advisor in a new West Coast alliance that American brokered with Alaska Airlines and added new international routes from Seattle and Los Angeles.
“Nowadays, Steffen regularly works on high-impact matters that directly affect American’s competitive advantage, customer experience and day-to-day operations,” said Haynes Boone counsel Chelsea Leitch, who nominated Horlacher for the 2024 DFW Corporate Counsel Award for Senior Counsel of the Year for a Large Legal Department. “While Steffen’s name has been largely out of the media, his work has made headlines. For example, when American Airlines recently needed to wind down its regional partnership with Mesa Airlines, the airline turned to Steffen. He deftly ended the contract and quickly adjusted existing agreements so passengers wouldn’t notice any changes.”
“Steffen’s diligence and dedication to his work has helped boost American’s competitive advantage,” Leitch said. “Steffen’s ability to comprehend the complexities of the law and his knowledge of American’s business is unsurpassed. His decades of experience in aviation have allowed him to develop a deep understanding of how the industry operates. He’s the kind of person who doesn’t just tell you the time — he knows how a watch works.”
The Association of Corporate Counsel’s DFW Chapter and The Lawbook have named Horlacher, who is now a director and senior attorney at American, the recipient of the 2024 Senior Counsel of the Year Award for Large Legal Departments (more than 21 lawyers).
Finalists will be celebrated and winners announced on Jan. 30 at the annual DFW Corporate Counsel Awards ceremony at the George W. Bush Institute.
“When Steffen is handed a matter, he owns it,” said Donald Broadfield, who is chief intellectual property and data counsel at American Airlines. “If it encompasses areas of law or of business with which he is unfamiliar, he doesn’t just bring in people and attorneys with knowledge of those areas — he also learns those areas. He pursues opposing views, chews on them and returns with questions and thoughts to poke at and pressure test responses. He is meticulous with the details. No part of an agreement is ‘boilerplate.’”
“Steffen is the attorney to whom folks would reach out to for head-hurting, complicated commercial matters,” Broadfield said. “He can easily and quickly handle the mundane matters, but he excels and thrives with the really complicated matters. He is one of the best, attentive, dedicated and most knowledgeable attorneys I know.”
Brad Levy, a shareholder at Winstead, said Horlacher is “relentless in his pursuit of answers and information generally.”
“Steffen is very thoughtful and detailed, often willing to examine issues from a variety of different perspectives and is not afraid to get into the minute details of any given topic,” Levy said. “At the same time, Steffen does not let his diligent nature stand in the way of practicality and is strong in his convictions. Steffen’s zest for the legal profession shines through at all times and makes him the great lawyer he is today.”
Premium Subscriber Q&A: Steffen Horlacher discusses the traits he seeks in outside counsel, what outside counsel need to know when working for him and more.
Horlacher, who is known as a great chef and a diehard Green Bay Packers fan, grew up in a small town in Southwestern Germany called Schwaebisch Hall, which is halfway between Stuttgart and Nuremberg. The U.S. Army had an installation in Schwaebisch Hall from the end of World War II until 1993.
His dad was a land surveyor for the government. His mother was a foreign language secretary. He has two brothers: One is in the shipping industry and the other is an engineer with Mercedes Benz.
Horlacher served two years in the German military where he rose to the level of lieutenant.
“I was interested in going to law school, but also in becoming a historian,” he said. “In the end, I did both.”
Horlacher earned degrees in law and history concurrently at Albrecht Ludwigs Universitaet of Freiburg in Breisgau. Legal training in Germany at the time consisted of law school until you pass the bar exam, which is followed by a multiyear mandatory clerkship that provides practical training with civil law and criminal law judges, the district attorney’s office, a government office and a law firm. And then a second bar exam is required.
In 1995, Horlacher moved to the U.S. to attend a one-year LLM program for foreign lawyers at the University of Houston Law Center.
His student visa allowed him to work for one year in his field of study. He applied in 1996 to several international corporations and law firms that he thought might be interested in having a lawyer in international civil law in their ranks for a year.
“Since I was not a U.S.-admitted lawyer, the options were limited to working as a paralegal or foreign legal advisor,” he said. “American Airlines offered me a paid position, whereas United Airlines only offered me an unpaid internship. So, I accepted American’s offer.”
As Horlacher worked at American, he studied for New York’s state bar exam because Texas at the time did not allow foreign lawyers without a law degree to sit for the bar exam.
After the one-year training period was up, American agreed to sponsor Horlacher for a H-1B work visa and, later, for a green card.
Even after he passed the bar in 1998, he continued to work for nearly three years as a foreign legal advisor, primarily working on international legal matters. The drafts of all of his contracts and agreements required the sign off of a licensed attorney.
After being promoted to junior attorney in 2001, American named Horlacher a senior attorney in 2012 and added the title of director in 2014.
“My areas of practice and responsibility have changed somewhat over the years,” he said. “I still provide legal advice on corporate and contract matters, draft agreements, supervise outside counsel, work with colleagues in the commercial and other groups in the legal department and clients from a large number of business departments and units at American, including international areas.”
During the past 25 years, Horlacher has been the lead commercial lawyer for most of American’s joint business and alliance relationships with international and domestic carriers.
In nominating Horlacher for the DFW Corporate Counsel Award, Leitch said his “ability to troubleshoot unique issues” is what makes him so valuable to leaders at American.
One of Horlacher’s most recent successes involved finding a more efficient system for delivering catered food onto planes at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. Instead of following the usual leasing and operating agreement to handle catering matters, American leased the land itself at DFW and built a state-of-the-art catering kitchen. This gave the airline more control over its catering operation.
“Steffen served as the point person for crafting all of the necessary changes to the catering agreement — and negotiating a new facility use agreement — with American Airlines’ catering services provider to implement these changes at DFW Airport,” Leitch wrote. “This first-of-its-kind deal was a breakthrough for the aviation industry. American’s $100 million catering facility at DFW now hosts the largest airline catering operation in the country. In doing this, American was able to enhance its competitive advantage by offering better customer service, better catering and more reliable on-time departures.”
Leitch said Horlacher possesses a “well-balanced combination of legal excellence, business acumen and people skills.”
“After 26 years at American, Steffen has developed a deepunderstanding of how the airline industry operates, and he is adept at analyzing and navigating complex issues,” she said. “Whatever the situation — forming the foundation for a new business relationship, navigating a sticky issue with a supplier or negotiating a high-impact transaction — Steffen is the guy you want on your team.”
American Managing Director and Senior Attorney Charlene Wandrisco said Horlacher is “one of the smartest people I know.”
“But just being smart doesn’t necessarily make you a good lawyer,” Wandrisco said. “Steffen combines his incredible intellect with his depth of historical knowledge of the airline industry to counsel his clients. His business clients look to him for guidance on complex matters, and he is not afraid to navigate through difficult situations. I would not be in this industry without Steffen. He was, and still is, a mentor to me.”
Fun Facts: Steffen Horlacher
- Favorite book: On the fiction side, C. S. Forester, The Horatio Hornblower saga and The Lord of the Rings. On the nonfiction side, David McCullough, 1776.
- Favorite music group: Queen
- Favorite movie: The Martian with Matt Damon and Singing in the Rain.
- Favorite restaurant: Friðheimar in Reykholt, Iceland. The restaurant is in a huge greenhouse, and the tables are surrounded by rows and rows of tomato plants and the menu is mainly tomato dishes. The tomato soup with freshly baked bread is fantastic, and their tomato cheesecake and tomato ice cream are delicious.
- Favorite beverage: Andechser Doppelbock — a dark and strong double bock beer brewed at Kloster Andechs, a monastery located south of Munich in Germany.
- Favorite vacation: Iceland in 2018
- Hero in life: My dad. He came from a blue-collar family, got a fairly basic education. Left school after eighth grade, took an apprenticeship to become a land surveyor for the government. He read book after book and was interested in travel, history and acquiring knowledge and made sure that his sons all went to university.