I’ve only cried once while interviewing a lawyer. That was in 2009 and the lawyer was Brian Robison. More on that shortly. Thirteen years later, I interviewed Robison again this weekend. No tears were shed today, as the subject was simply a lawyer moving from one firm to another – something that happens multiple times a day in Texas.
Yet the two interviews were tightly connected, thanks to an amazing four-year-old girl whose struggle for life and tragic death made Robison a “better person, a better father and husband and a better lawyer.” And unquestionably, a great mediator.
Robison has spent 25 years practicing complex commercial and antitrust litigation in Big Law — the first 15 years at Vinson & Elkins, the largest and most profitable corporate law firm in Texas. For the past decade, he’s been a partner at Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, an elite law firm founded in Los Angeles that now has more than 100 lawyers in Texas.
Now 51, Robison starts Tuesday as a partner at Brown Fox, a business boutique with 19 attorneys in the DFW area. He’s still doing large-dollar corporate litigation, but he wants to spend more time helping clients solve problems and find the middle ground.
“I will continue working on several active antitrust cases along with the Gibson Dunn team, just at a different address,” he said in an exclusive interview with The Texas Lawbook. “I am moving to a different firm because I want to add being a mediator and an arbitrator to what I am already doing, and those ADR practices are really not compatible with the Gibson Dunn model.”
Because of Gibson Dunn’s higher hourly rate structure and its need to avoid potential client conflicts, Robison’s desire to do mediation wouldn’t work there.
“I finally decided I needed to give this a try,” he said. “My new firm will give me the flexibility to keep doing what I am doing but also add these ADR components, and I will be based in the Frisco office, which is far closer to our home and our kids’ schools than downtown Dallas.
“I have watched Brown Fox grow from two guys, two laptops and a printer in an office in the West End into the firm it is today … a business boutique that can meet the most common legal needs of any business,” he said.
Russ Brown, the founding partner at Brown Fox, said he met Robison 14 years ago through work and through a handful of Christian ministries.
“Brian is a lawyer I have admired over the years; and it is no secret that I wanted to work with him for several years,” Brown said. “Business litigation has been our bread and butter from day one. So adding Brian is a perfect fit.”
Robison was born in Aurora, Colorado. His father was in the JAG Corp stationed at Lowery Air Force Base in Denver and later became a trial attorney. His mother was “a homemaker who kept us all in line.”
As a freshman in high school, Robison joined the debate team.
“I figured out in a hurry that I loved standing up in front of a judge, pulling together a set of facts and making an argument,” he said. “I love to persuade people, help people solve problems and win; and being a trial lawyer gives me the chance to do all three.”
He graduated in 1995 from the University of Texas School of Law.
During the past 25 years, Robison has represented clients in several multibillion-dollar disputes. He played a key role for the American Association of Orthodontists in an antitrust case in which the court granted his client judgment as a matter of law at the close of the plaintiff’s case. He worked with great trial lawyers Rob Walters, Lee Godfrey and Ricardo Cedillo as they successfully represented Blockbuster Video in an antitrust trial that saw Sumner Redstone testify live as the first witness, and other Hollywood titans like Michael Eisner testify by video.
For 14 years, Robison has represented Cal-Maine Foods, the largest seller of shell eggs in the U.S., in multiple class actions that literally involve the price of eggs. He will continue to handle that litigation at Brown Fox.
Robison said his “most important and gratifying victory” was his representation of Deutsche Telekom in the 2019 case in which a group of state attorneys general sued to stop the Sprint/T-Mobile merger.
“Our client’s witnesses were some of the smartest and most interesting people I have ever met, and they were fun to prepare and represent,” he said. “And of course, that case had massive ramifications for our client and for the telecom industry in the U.S.”
Then five years ago, Robison learned that helping clients resolve disputes short of a trial brought him significant satisfaction.
“I would like to dive into the parties and facts in an ongoing dispute, facilitate a conversation about each side’s real interests, help the parties evaluate the strengths and weaknesses in their cases, and help them weigh the pros and cons of a settlement versus a world without a settlement,” he said.
“Are the parties better off with a deal that stops the bleeding in legal fees and removes risk, or are they better off not taking the best-and-final deal on the table?” he said. “What are the consequences of not resolving the case now? Would either side lose a valuable customer, for example, or lose access to vital intellectual property or an essential facility?”
The decision to do mediation, to change firms and to work closer to home and his family leads us back to the interview in January 2009. Robison was still a partner at V&E. He moved to Gibson Dunn two years later.
To be clear, I didn’t “tear up” during my interview with Robison.
I cried.
And not just for a minute or two. The entire interview. That night, I went home and penned the article below, which was published in the ABA Antitrust Law Journal. About 18 months later, Texas Monthly republished the story.
The Trials of Brian Robison
Brian Robison was in the middle of preparing a major witness for a deposition in an international arbitration for one of the world’s largest manufacturers in April 2005, when his secretary asked him to step outside the conference room.
Amelia
Doctors from the Mayo Clinic were on the phone to give him the results of the most recent medical tests on his then one-year-old daughter, Amelia.
“The doctors feared that Amelia had an incurable and fatal metabolic disorder,” says Brian. “They said they had no idea what would happen or when. They told me that if they were right, then this was basically a death notice. My wife and I were devastated.”
Brian spent the next five minutes crying, praying, and trying to regain his composure and focus. Then, he walked down the hall to finish with his witness.
“I had no choice,” he says. “I was the only partner working on the case. My witness was making his one trip to the U.S., and his deposition started the next morning.”
Exactly three years later, on April 10, 2008, Amelia Robison died in her bed at home. Brian and his wife, Madeline, were by her side.
The 39-year-old Vinson & Elkins partner has established himself as one of the nation’s leading antitrust and commercial litigators. He represents some of the nation’s largest corporations. His courtroom successes have been many and significant.
During the past seven years, Brian has successfully represented the nation’s largest video retailer in a major antitrust lawsuit and one of the world’s largest manufacturing companies in an international arbitration. He triumphantly defended one of the nation’s largest commercial lease financing companies in two fraud and antitrust class action lawsuits, and successfully represented a private investment fund in a $250 million oil and gas arbitration.
Currently, Brian represents a major national financial institution in a series of large antitrust lawsuits—some seeking certification of a nationwide class—alleging price-fixing in the municipal bond industry.
“I believe that as the state and federal governments get more aggressive in their policing of antitrust and financial matters, we are going to see more and more of this type of litigation,” says Brian. “Many of these lawsuits are filed by plaintiff’s lawyers within days of the government announcing that it is opening an inquiry. The plaintiff’s lawyers don’t even wait for the governmental agency’s findings to see if there is or is not any wrongdoing. They just sue immediately and hope that the facts develop in their favor someday.”
Brian’s successes have not gone unnoticed. In 2008, V&E named Brian the co-leader of its national antitrust litigation practice.
“Brian has handled some significant and high-profile cases for us, and he is an excellent lawyer who commands the respect of all the lawyers and judges,” says Liberty Mutual Assistant General Counsel Sean McSweeney. “His expertise is his ability to analyze these very complex class action antitrust and RICO cases and to cut through the clutter to identify the successful arguments.”
Adds Rob Walters, General Counsel of Dallas-based Energy Future Holdings: “Brian simply outworks and knows more than all the other lawyers on the case. And he has a tremendous credibility in the courtroom, so judges and jurors trust him.
“But then, when you learn what Brian has been through the past few years, you realize what a truly special individual he is,” says Rob.
While Brian was fighting for his clients in court, he was battling a tougher, much more important battle at home. In between the depositions and after long hours drafting motions for summary judgment, Brian and his wife were fighting to keep their daughter alive.
Brian’s life changed in November 2003, when he was named a partner at V&E, which is recognized as one of the world’s leading energy law firms. A month later, Brian and his wife, Madeline, had their first child, Amelia. And a few days after that, Brian was hired by one of the world’s largest manufacturers in a huge international arbitration.
“I was on top of the world,” says Brian. “Everything was going great.”
But soon after birth, Amelia had difficulty swallowing food. What she did swallow, she violently vomited. When Amelia was nine weeks old, doctors discovered that she was aspirating her food.
“For the next two months, Madeline inserted a feeding tube down her nose and into her stomach to pump in the food,” says Brian. “You can imagine how awful it was to insert that tube.” When Amelia was four months old, doctors inserted a feeding tube port into her stomach, which is how she would be fed for the next four years. “She still gained almost no weight over the next several months,” says Brian.
Brian and his wife took Amelia to “more doctors and specialists for more tests than we would count.” During a 23-day long hospital stay in Dallas in the summer of 2004, doctors thought they had discovered that Amelia’s body was not metabolizing fats—a big problem because most baby foods are full of fat.
The next stop was the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, where a metabolic geneticist and several other specialists suspected that Amelia had a fatal metabolic disorder. They tested Amelia for every known metabolic disorder, but all the tests were negative. Even so, the specialists at the Mayo Clinic thought that she still might have a fat metabolism problem—just not a known fat metabolism problem.
“The doctors said that if their suspicions turned out to be true, then we were dealing with the ‘Amelia Syndrome.’ She was the only known victim of this suspected disorder in the history of modern medicine,” says Brian.
Acting on this theory, the doctors at the Mayo Clinic put Amelia on a special diet of vitamins, enzymes, and simple fats. The treatment worked. Amelia gained weight and the vomiting stopped. A couple of months later, doctors told Brian that Amelia had infant asthma, requiring four long breathing treatments a day, plus suction treatments with a machine that would suck saliva and mucus from her mouth, nose, and lungs.
“Our home looked like an infirmary, with meds and medical equipment everywhere,” he says.
Meanwhile, Brian worked on his cases whenever he could — on airplane trips to see specialists, in hospital waiting rooms, and during weekends at hotels when Madeline would take Amelia sightseeing.
In July 2005, Brian and others in V&E’s Dallas litigation section were hired by Alamosa PCS, a national wireless telecommunications company, to litigate a multibillion-dollar case against SprintNextel. Alamosa claimed that by merging with Nextel and assuming control of the Nextel nationwide wireless network, Sprint had breached its contract with Alamosa that granted Alamosa the exclusive right to operate a wireless communications network for Sprint in certain regions of the country.
“This case was so much fun because we filed the lawsuit in Delaware, where cases often go to trial weeks after they are filed,” says Brian. “We took dozens of depositions in a matter of weeks. I was coordinating our litigation, while also helping Madeline with Amelia. Things were happening so fast in the case that I started sleeping with my Blackberry on my nightstand.”
Just weeks before trial, the case settled when Sprint Nextel agreed to purchase Alamosa for $4.3 billion.
Brian and his wife also started Amelia on physical, occupational, and speech therapy to try to get her caught up on the developmental checklists.
“Even though the doctors at the Mayo Clinic suspected that Amelia had a fatal metabolic disorder, they could not prove it because she tested negative for all known disorders,” he says. “So, we spent the three years rearing her as if she did not have a fatal disorder, as if she could catch up if we just kept working with Amelia and her team of therapists.”
There were also other visits to doctors across the country, including another trip to the Mayo Clinic for another round of tests in March 2005. Throughout Amelia’s life, Brian would work all day at V&E and then come home to help Madeline take care of Amelia.
“We never gave up, and neither did she,” says Brian. “Amelia eventually learned to say four words and nearly learned to walk on her own. Her determination was amazing. Her strong will not only saved her life nearly a dozen times, but also allowed her to do more than she should have, given her condition.”
In November 2007, Amelia started losing weight. At first, the doctors were not alarmed. Many four-year-olds lose baby fat, and Amelia was more active than ever before. She was nearly walking on her own, was going to Sunday School, and attended a mothers’ co-op class twice a week.
Then, in March 2008, Amelia’s weight plummeted again. Brian and his wife increased her calorie intake through the feeding tube, but to no avail. Later that month, her digestive system finally failed.
This was the sudden downturn that the Mayo doctors had told Madeline and Brian might happen, but that they had hoped would never come.
“Amelia was so stubborn and strong-willed that she held on for another 10 days with no food or water,” says Brian. “We know she didn’t want to leave us or her younger sister and brother, both of whom adored her, and both of whom she adored. All through her ordeals, Amelia was a sweet, adorable child. She had every right to be angry and scream all day long, but she did not.
“She fought hard for basic things that the rest of us take for granted. She had a beautiful smile and infectious laugh. She loved to have people read books and sing songs to her,” he said. “She loved to swing at the park and take long stroller rides. She taught all of us about the value of life, the importance of living every day to the fullest, and the need to rally around loved ones going through a traumatic situation. And her amazing will to live and succeed were a sight to behold.”
V&E partners and clients say Amelia got those character traits from her father and mother.
“Brian is one of the most courageous and dedicated individuals I have ever met, which make him a wonderful and loving father, but also a truly great lawyer,” says Vinson & Elkins partner Jeff Chapman, who has served as Brian’s mentor. “Brian is one of the future leaders of this law firm, which makes me confident that the future of V&E is very good.”
A year after Amelia’s death, Brian has no regrets. “No question, Amelia changed me,” he says. “She made my faith stronger. She made me a better person, a better father, a better husband, and yes, even a better lawyer.”
In 2011, rock musician Warren Zevon made his final public appearance on David Letterman’s show just a couple months before he died of lung cancer. Letterman asked the artist of Werewolves of London if he, as someone facing imminent death, had any advice for others.
“Enjoy every sandwich,” Zevon responded.
Robison said Amelia’s suffering and death gave him definite clarity.
“Don’t sweat the small stuff,” he said. “Recognize how fast the childhood years go by, and don’t miss them.”
Robison, who has three other children, said Amelia taught him that “relationships and experiences are more important than money and things.”
“It is tough for me to complain about much in my life after seeing how Amelia met the far more massive challenges in her life with a smile,” he said. “In my practice, I think I am more patient with clients and witnesses than I was before Amelia. I think I do a better job of getting to know a witness’s personality and strengths than I did before.”
Those qualities, according to lawyers who know Robison best, will also make him an excellent mediator.