Scott Keller, the solicitor general for Texas for the past three-and-one-half years, is joining Baker Botts as a partner in its appellate law section.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced Monday that assistant solicitor Kyle Hawkins is replacing Keller as the state’s top appellate legal counsel.
A University of Texas School of Law graduate who clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, Keller argued 11 cases before the nation’s highest court during his time as Texas Solicitor. He won six, lost five and won another case that did not make it to argument.
“We were able to rack up some significant victories,” Keller told The Texas Lawbook in an interview Monday. “But it is time for a new challenge.”
Keller praised Hawkins as a good choice to replace him as the state’s solicitor.
“I hired Kyle a year ago and he’s not only a workhorse and whip smart, he’s one of the good people in this world,” said Keller, who clerked for former Chief Judge Alex Kozinski of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit and served as chief legal counsel for U.S. Senator Ted Cruz.
Besides the 11 oral arguments at the U.S. Supreme Court, Keller has argued nine cases at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and eight cases at the Texas Supreme Court.
Baker Botts litigation practice chair Van Beckwith said that the addition of Keller to an appellate team that includes former Texas Chief Justice Tom Phillips, former Supreme Court clerks Aaron Streett and Evan Young and appellate practice group leader Macey Reasoner Stokes gives the law firm one of the leading appellate practices in the U.S.
Keller has lived in Austin, but he is relocating to Washington, D.C. for Baker Botts.
“Washington is the national center for the practice of appellate law,” he said. “This is a unique opportunity for me to join one of the most successful and established law firms in the U.S.”
In a press release, Paxton praised Keller for scoring several major legal victories during his time as Texas solicitor, including litigation involving the immigration policy known as DAPA, Texas’s redistricting maps, Texas’s voter-ID law, Environmental Protection Agency Clean Power Plan and Regional Haze rules, the Texas law banning sanctuary cities and the state’s public school-funding system. In just this past year at the Texas Supreme Court, Keller argued five cases and won them all.
“Scott Keller has handled some of the most important and complicated litigation our state has seen in recent years and achieved a career’s worth of incredible success in just over three years as solicitor general,” Paxton said. “Scott is a brilliant legal mind who could work anywhere, but fortunately he chose to serve the state of Texas and its citizens.”
As for Hawkins, he previously practiced law at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, served as a law clerk to Justice Alito and Fifth Circuit Judge Edith Jones.