Houston native and Susman Godfrey partner Justin Nelson has represented clients in landmark, complex lawsuits involving AI, copyright and First Amendment law.
But his interest in building a career in law started with a simple thought.
“I think the potential for law to do justice is probably the most important part in what motivated me and what continues still to motivate me,” Nelson said.
A graduate of Yale University and Columbia Law School, Nelson’s resume includes a clerkship with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and a run for Texas attorney general.
His recent courtroom victories include a September settlement of a copyright suit brought on behalf of authors against the AI company Anthropic for $1.5 billion plus interest.
His team also secured a $787.5 million settlement with Fox News in 2023 on behalf of Dominion Voting Systems. Dominion sued the news organization over allegedly defamatory comments that its voting machines were used to steal votes from President Donald Trump in 2020.
Nelson is representing the American Bar Association pro bono in its suit against the Trump administration and is also currently representing Media Matters in its suit against X Corp.
For young lawyers, he offered some simple advice.
“Try your best, one. Number two, be polite. And number three, recognize that the law is more than just pushing paper,” he said. “The law is about doing justice, and if you’ve kept those three things in mind, then you’re off to a really strong start.”
Nelson recently sat down with The Texas Lawbook to discuss his career and more.
The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Texas Lawbook: You went to high school in Houston. Did you plan on coming back to Texas after school?
Nelson: Our plan all along was, especially when kids came, to get back to Texas. The great thing about Susman Godfrey is that we have a national practice. It’s quite easy to practice nationwide and live in Texas, and also to work between offices. I love Texas.
Texas Lawbook: What has been a memorable experience or case in your career?
Nelson: I’ve had many of them, and it’s really been a blessing to be able to work on so many really important, high-profile cases. Look, I think my bio speaks about many of them, including the most recent, which is the Anthropic AI settlement, and, of course, some of the other defamation work. But one thing that I’m really proud of is that during the 2020 election, I represented governmental officials in their official capacity in a pro bono manner, defending the results of the 2020 election. These were Republican, Democratic officials across the board, and it wasn’t about who won. It was about defending the integrity of the election. And that was incredibly important and, I think, really made a difference. So that’s one of the more memorable parts of what I’ve been doing.
Texas Lawbook: Do you have a pretrial ritual or a posttrial celebration?
Nelson: Not really, no. But part of it is because before trial, you’re just preparing so much for trial and making sure everything is in good shape. And then after trial, you’re just so exhausted that you just want to sleep for a little bit. It’s nice to rest and relax after a victory, but it’s also nice to rest and relax regardless of the result. And look, I mean, getting ready for trial is, in many ways, exhausting, but it should be fun. That’s hopefully what you’re gearing up to do, and you’re trying to get the best result for your client, of course. If it stops being fun, that’s when it becomes a problem.
Texas Lawbook: What is a hobby of yours when you get a chance to step away from your desk or the courtroom?
Nelson: I like to exercise, I like to read, and I like playing with my kids. They’re at relatively young ages, and it’s great to hang out with them as well.
Texas Lawbook: You previously ran for attorney general in 2018. What are some of your lessons learned from that campaign experience?
Nelson: Some of them are more applicable, many — most of them actually — are more applicable to life at large that also apply to being a lawyer. I mean, running a campaign, being a candidate, is different from being a lawyer, even one like me who is often in hearings or in front of juries or judges. It’s a different type of speaking. Every single thing that you do is analyzed so carefully and in my mind wrongly. Every single misstatement or misstep is sometimes blown out of proportion or even created out of whole cloth.
I think in many ways, the legal profession is significantly more forgiving than a public campaign. But I think, overall, what stuck with me is really trying to understand why I got into that race in the first instance, which was to try to do justice and to try to follow the rule of law and to try to have, I think, really, a government that reflects those principles. I think running for public office and being a public official is certainly one way to do that, but it’s not the only way to do that.
When you’re a candidate, you’re always on, you’re always working. I think it’s certainly helpful to have a vigorous campaign, to be out there all the time. I don’t regret running. I got to see so many parts of the state and meet so many different people from all walks of life — Republicans, Democrats and independents. It really was a great experience, but it was also incredibly, incredibly demanding.
Texas Lawbook: Will we see you run for another political office again?
Nelson: It’s really tough to run for public office. I did it in 2018 because no one else was stepping up to run against the current office holder, and I thought that was unacceptable. I thought that Texas deserved better, and I ran as a lawyer’s lawyer. I ran to appeal to everybody, regardless of party — Democrat, Republican, independent, left, right, center. My motto in that campaign was really just to do justice and to follow the rule of law, and so that’s why I ran in that race. I think people thought I ran a really good campaign. I’m proud of the campaign that I ran. I ran it not to seek public office, but to do good. I don’t know if another set of circumstances will present itself. Never is a long time. But right now, I’m really enjoying my little career and focused on it.
Texas Lawbook: I saw you clerked for Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. What are some of the things you learned from her work?
Nelson: Well, it was really an amazing experience. Before that, I clerked with Judge [J. Harvie] Wilkinson on the Fourth Circuit, and I learned so much from both of them. The first is that being careful really matters, and really analyzing an issue and trying to get to the right result, and hard work, really focusing on trying to do your best at all times. I think from that, [second] — it’s not just from them, but certainly I started learning it then — … you can’t control the result, but you can control the effort, and that’s something that really stuck with me. And for Justice O’Connor, she is such a historic figure but so nice and so kind and so warm, and the ability to learn from her, not just as a judge, but as a person, was so tremendous. Judge Wilkinson is such a fantastic writer, and I really learned so much about the law and legal writing from him and that clerkship.
Texas Lawbook: One of your big cases was Dominion Voting Systems v. Fox News Network. How do you see the impact of that case more broadly?
Nelson: I can’t really talk about that case particularly, but I think just taking a step back and looking at the overall landscape of the First Amendment and in defamation law, I do think that what we have seen is that the ability to seek truth is something that is part of our justice system, but we do have to be careful … that there is a balance. And I think this is a balance that, certainly in my career, I’ve tried to strike, which is, you don’t want to be so overly aggressive that you’re suppressing speech as well. And getting that balance right in a way that is both protective of speech but also allows for appropriate compensation for the harm done for lies is something that I think courts will continue to grapple with. And really, I think for the most part, cases like New York Times v. Sullivan, which is the preeminent Supreme Court case, really has gotten right about trying to strike that balance and trying to figure out where within the spectrum a particular case lies, which is to say that you should be able to recover for the harms that you have suffered, but you also should have a high standard, especially if you’re talking about issues of public importance and public officials.
Texas Lawbook: Susman Godfrey has challenged the executive orders from the Trump administration that target the firm. How do you feel about being associated with the firm?
Nelson: I can’t talk about the executive order litigation either, except to say that I’m very proud to be associated with Susman Godfrey. I should probably just leave it at that. I’m very proud to be associated with Susman Godfrey.
I restarted at the firm now, over 20 years ago. But in fact, my first [experience with the firm] was as a summer associate before I clerked. In between my clerkships for Judge Wilkinson and Justice O’Connor in September of 2001, actually, I practiced with Susman Godfrey for a year, and then I went to clerk, and then eventually came back in early 2005. Susman Godfrey is a wonderful place to practice. I’ve got so many great partners. I think one of our real strengths is that we have such a deep bench of qualified, talented, wonderful people. You come to Susman Godfrey to learn how to be a trial lawyer.
I will tell you that there is one year … right after my clerkship that I worked for a [Washington,] D.C. firm. I liked working at a D.C. firm, but the stuff that I was able to do as a first-year associate at Susman Godfrey — taking depositions, arguing $20 [or] $30 million summary judgment motions — was more than midlevel partners were doing at a D.C. firm. I realized that I wanted to be a trial lawyer. I wanted to be in court and to argue and to shape strategy, and learning from Steve Susman and Lee Godfrey, it was such a formative experience. I think that continues to be what drives young associates to our firm still is the ability to get great experience very, very, very quickly. And so you’re betting on yourself here, and that continues to be true. We enjoy what we do.
Texas Lawbook: Another recent big case of yours was the suit against Anthropic. First, with AI litigation like this, where do you see regulation in the courts headed?
Nelson: I think that copyright law is a very powerful tool. Copyright, in this instance, is part of the United States Constitution. From the very beginning, this country has been really protective of intellectual property, and it is what sets us apart as a country from other countries, including China, that are less protective of intellectual property. We reward creativity. We reward that in the form of copyrights and patents. And here in the copyright law, there is a very powerful tool in the form of statutory damages that, in this case where there was this mass piracy of books and millions of books were illegally downloaded, the class that we eventually settled was for those who had registered copyrights.
If there’s a message to send, it’s that, if you are an author, if you are a copyright holder, please register your copyrights, because that really does give you additional tools to go after and seek compensation for the harms that you have suffered. Copyright law already does give us a certain amount from the courts themselves. But will the law solve everything? No, and I think we are really at the cusp here of trying to figure out what the next years, decades, will look like with respect to AI. And you have these hugely powerful, large language models that really have been powered by strip mining human creativity and taking — trying to take, at least — everything that’s ever been created and putting that into their model so that they can then predict the next word that’s going to come out of this large language model. And it’s very scary.
It’s one of the reasons why I wanted to get into this area a couple of years ago. In many ways, it’s the flip side of what we were just talking about, which is AI really has the potential to hugely affect the rise of misinformation and disinformation. And trying to get that right — trying to understand where that balance is but also recognizing that AI doesn’t suddenly upend the traditional rules, and that if there is a defamation, if there is something that is incorrect, if you are harming, and if it’s taking place through a large language model or through a company that has that, then we need to be thinking about that if you are knowingly facilitating these really, really, really harmful statements or pictures that you know are false — we’ve got to find a way to try to grapple with that. Because otherwise, if we as a society don’t have a shared basis of truth, how can we agree on anything else? And that, I think, is where we’re headed. And the law, as the copyright law, does have sufficient tools to deal with it to some degree, but it’s not just an issue for civil litigation. It’s significantly broader than that.
Texas Lawbook: Are there other Anthropic cases?
Nelson: There are some other Anthropic cases that I’m not involved in. But in the AI language model cases? Yes, and we as a firm are involved in a number of them. I’m lead counsel in representing book authors in a very similar case against OpenAI and Microsoft that’s currently pending in a multidistrict litigation in the Southern District of New York. Our firm is also involved and is representing the New York Times in suing OpenAI and Microsoft in that same MDL. We have other cases that are pending, representing creators across the board, both in copyright law and also my partners are also representing some copyright owners in antitrust cases against Google, alleging some similar underlying facts.
Texas Lawbook: How do you prepare for such big cases?
Nelson: I think whether it’s a big case or a small case, you can’t control the result. I’ve been lucky enough to have some really great results. If any lawyer tells you that they’re 100%, they’re lying. And so all you can do is try your best and prepare as hard as you can. It’s what I try to teach my kids as well, right? And so, regardless of the size of the case, regardless of who the client is, what you can control, what’s in your power, is to try your best. And that’s what I try to do.
Texas Lawbook: Any other big cases coming up?
Nelson: My docket right now spans a whole bunch of different areas, from general contract disputes to bankruptcy to commercial litigation to patent [and], obviously, copyright and defamation. There are a bunch of areas. I think I’ve got seven trials right now on my docket for 2026.
Texas Lawbook: If you weren’t a lawyer, what career do you see yourself having?
Nelson: Is a professional baseball player off limits? Unfortunately, I think I learned the lesson the hard way in high school for that. But no, look, I mean, it’s a great question, and one that I really haven’t really given a lot of thought to because I like what I do. In high school, I did a wonderful public health program, and for those doctors and healthcare professionals who are on the front line dealing with public health issues, I think it’s such a wonderful public service, too.
Texas Lawbook: Recent books you’ve read?
Nelson: There are a couple. The one is very related to what I’m doing right now, which is Empire of AI. It’s a page-turner. The other one — I’ve started it, but I have not finished it — it’s a biography of Charles Sumner by a Houston native named Zaakir Tameez, who wrote the book while at Yale Law School. And he is a super impressive guy, and so it is currently on my bedside stand as we speak.
If you or someone you know would like to be profiled in a future edition of Asked & Answered, please let us know at tlblitigation@texaslawbook.net. Check out our other Asked & Answered interviews below:
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