Longtime Baker Botts executive compensation lawyer Eric Winwood moved his office across Dallas’ Klyde Warren Park over the weekend, joining Sidley Austin as a partner.
Winwood is at least the fourth lawyer specializing in employee benefits, executive pay and tax to switch firms in the past year. Stephen Jacobson and Rob Fowler joined Kirkland & Ellis earlier this year and J.C. Penney senior counsel April Goff jumped to Perkins Coie’s Dallas office last year.
“I was happy at Baker Botts and I wasn’t looking to move, but Yvette and others called and showed me how Sidley’s platform worked for me and my clients,” Winwood told The Texas Lawbook. “Their potential got me interested and Yvette and Sidley are optimistic about the future and what is happening in Texas.”
Yvette Ostolaza, who is the managing partner of Sidley’s Dallas office and sits on the firm’s global management committee, said Winwood is “a well-respected lawyer in the Dallas market” and “has the specialization that we are looking for to continue building on our national employee benefits and executive compensation capabilities.”
“His experience in the oil and gas sector will be of particular value to our clients in that industry,” Ostolaza said.
Born in Indiana and raised in Ohio, Winwood was destined to be a lawyer. His grandfather had a general law practice in rural Ohio. His father is currently a lawyer focusing on trusts and estates after being an attorney at the IRS for several years. His mother is also a lawyer – she chose to work for the Mead Corporation, especially its then-startup called Lexis Nexis.
Traveling to Texas on a business trip with his mother, he discovered Southern Methodist University. He graduated from SMU with a degree in geology in 1996. Winwood then received his law degree from Tulane University and an advanced degree in taxation from New York University School of Law.
Winwood admits few people go to law school thinking about becoming an ERISA lawyer.
“I had a geology degree and thought I would become an energy lawyer,” he said. “But I took a tax class the first semester of my second year just to get it out of the way, and I enjoyed it and kept taking more and more classes and gravitating toward it,” he said.
While his school, Winwood’s dad contacted him with a question about executive compensation and he said he found the issue “kind of interesting.”
After four years working in the corporate section at Haynes and Boone, Winwood jumped to Baker Botts, where he became a partner in 2010.
Winwood said that he looks forward to bringing his knowledge of representing corporations to Sidley’s need for executive compensation expertise in advising private equity firms.
Last month, Bart Biggers, an airline and aviation partner at Winstead, joined Sidley’s office in Houston.