Willkie Farr announced Tuesday that it has added two experienced corporate M&A lawyers – former McGuire Woods partner Jay Hughes and former Grizzly Energy General Counsel Jonathan Curth – to its Houston office.
Hughes, who was managing partner of McGuire Woods’ office in Houston and a regular in the Corporate Deal Tracker’s weekly roundup, joined Willkie Farr on Monday. Curth, who also served as the assistant GC of Newfield Exploration, started at the firm two weeks ago.
With the additions of Hughes and Curth, Willkie Farr now has 43 lawyers in Texas. The Texas Lawbook estimates that the firm’s Houston lawyers generated about $50 million in revenues in 2019 – a 33% increase over the year before.
In an interview with The Lawbook, Willkie co-managing partners in Houston, Bruce Herzog and Michael Piazza, said they became friends with Hughes during the past few years and first mentioned him joining Willkie about 18 months ago.
“Jay is a very gifted attorney who has deep relationships with his clients in energy and private equity,” Piazza said. “He was a perfect fit for our firm from a practice and personality standpoint.”
Hughes, who moved to Houston from Virginia four years ago, said he likes Willkie’s plan for strategic and deliberate growth in Texas.
“I loved McGuire Woods, but I decided that Willkie’s platform was better for my clients and my practice,” he said. “We got to know each other and I’m not even sure that I gave them my resume.”
Hughes was one of the key legal advisors to Dominion Energy on its recent $175 million purchase of 5% ownership of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline and all of the Pivotal LNG facility from Southern Co.
Last October, Hughes also represented Dominion in its $2 billion sale of a 25% equity stake in an LNG facility to Brookfield Super-Core Infrastructure.
“Finding young, dynamic lawyers like Jay who also want to be involved in this community are few and far between,” Herzog said. “We have private equity clients who have raised a lot of money and I think we are going to see a lot of investment opportunities in the weeks and months ahead.”
Herzog and Piazza said Curth, a 2007 graduate of the University of Texas School of Law, is also a perfect fit for Willkie.
“Jonathan is a very gifted oil and gas lawyer,” Piazza said. “As a former general counsel and CEO, he has a unique perspective of going through restructuring from the inside of a company.”
In 2018, Curth, who was then the GC at Vanguard Natural Resources, led the company’s $14.5 million sale of oil and gas properties in the Arkoma and DJ Basins to an undisclosed buyer.
Herzog said that Willkie recently added a second floor to its lease at the Chase Tower in downtown Houston, which will allow them to add up to an additional 20 lawyers.