Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury
The Austin legal market continues to be red hot with the arrival of Latham & Watkins, which tapped corporate attorneys from DLA Piper and Wilson Sonsini. Firm leaders anticipate current partners with strong ties to Texas will either relocate or spend significant time in the state capital.
O’Melveny & Myers, which opened offices in Austin and Dallas in June, added Baker Botts trial law partner Tim Durst on Wednesday. The Los Angeles-based firm's chair told The Texas Lawbook that he expects "more people to join" O'Melveny soon and that the firm plans "to be materially larger than we are now."
The pandemic has resulted in a number of interesting twists and turns in legal recruiting; most recently, the increasing number of companies and law firms requiring new hires to be fully vaccinated against Covid-19. Pye Legal Group President Stacy Humphries surveys the lay of the land and shares best practices for landing top candidates.
Our Gang of 10 Texas-based corporate law firms are an under-the-radar success story. These firms do nearly all their work inside the state, and they beat the overall Texas Lawbook 50 in revenue growth and new lawyer jobs. Most Gang of 10 firms are small, but two big legacy firms confine operations to Texas – Jackson Walker and Winstead.
They bear storied names in Texas corporate law: Vinson & Elkins, Baker Botts, Haynes and Boone, Akin Gump, Locke Lord and Bracewell. National firms continue to expand their Texas market share, but the big legacy firms still carry considerable weight in Texas corporate law. They’re not giving in without a fight and busy growing revenues and hiring lawyers in 2021. Editor's note: The Lawbook article has been updated to show that Baker Botts' 2020 revenue in Texas was $361.9M in Texas - not $336M as originally reported.
Citing the growing threat of the Covid-19 Delta variant among people who are unvaccinated, several law firms in Texas – Akin Gump, Haynes and Boone, Norton Rose Fulbright and Vinson & Elkins – have announced they are delaying the date when they will require lawyers and staff to return to the office and that employees working on-site must be vaccinated.
Don’t write the obituary for Texas-based corporate law firms just yet. There are fewer than a decade ago, but most are doing quite well financially. In fact, 10 scored record Texas revenues in 2020 despite the pandemic and economic slowdown. Even more of the Texas-based firms say they’re doing better in 2021 than last year. And all of them are hiring more lawyers to handle the increased legal work clients are sending them.
Newly released data from the Small Business Administration reveals the full extent to which Texas law firms relied on Payroll Protection Plan loans to stay afloat while adjusting to the widespread disruptions of the Covid-19 pandemic. But the data also shows that law firms in Texas rebounded enough to leave a fair amount of federal money on the table. The Texas Lawbook has the numbers.
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