© 2012 The Texas Lawbook.
By Natalie Posgate and Mark Curriden
Writers for The Texas lawbook
Following the recent trend of lawyers leaving big firms to join boutique firms, Houston trial lawyer Graham Hill has announced that he has joined Heard Robins Cloud & Black as a partner.
Hill is widely known around Texas for his work in personal injury litigation, wrongful death, class action, mass tort and commercial litigation. He had been a partner at Locke Lord in Houston.
“I had a great time with Locke Lord – very positive experience,” he says. “I have a lot left in my tank and I want to keep doing what I love. I wanted to be involved with a small group.”
Hill is known for his leading role in handling the nation’s first courtroom trial over the recalled diet drug Fen-Phen and negotiating $1 billion class-action settlement for patients harmed by defective hip implants.
In addition to Hill’s accomplishments in the courtroom, he is a former chairman of the Houston Bar Association’s Litigation Committee and former president of the Houston Trial Lawyers Association. He is also the immediate former president of the International Society of Barristers – and is only the second Texas attorney to be president of the invitation-only group, which only has 650 members worldwide.
Hill’s practice at Heard Robins focuses on commercial business litigation and cases that involve class-action mass torts and products liability.
After finishing law school at Southern Methodist University’s Dedman School of Law in 1976, Hill joined Fulbright & Jaworski, specializing in insurance and worker’s compensation defense cases. He estimates that he tried 40 to 60 jury trials as an associate – a feat unfathomable today.
“It is too bad that lawyers at large law firms today don’t get to try cases any more,” he says. “When you are trying to represent the whole world, it is hard to sue anybody.”
When Hill left Fulbright, he started a law firm with his long-time friend and law partner Charlie Parker. Later, Hill and Parker joined Locke Lord’s litigation department in 2003.
Hill says Parker’s departure for Yetter Coleman, a Houston litigation boutique, influenced his decision to come to Heard Robins. Here he gets to play the role of mentor and senior partner at a firm where the oldest partner is 45.
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