HOUSTON — Randy Sorrels was in junior high when he took a standardized test about career options.
His results? Anything but a lawyer.
“That was all the challenge I needed and decided to become a lawyer,” he said.
More than four decades later, Sorrels is more than just a lawyer. In fact, today marks his official term as the lawyer who will lead the governing body of attorneys in Texas.
The State Bar of Texas officially swore Sorrels in as its 139th president during the lunch hour of its annual meeting at the JW Marriott in downtown Austin.
Leadership has been in Sorrels’ blood ever since high school. He discovered his liking and talent for it when he got a job at an athletic shoe store at age 16. By the time he turned 17, he was a manager at the store.
He has also served as president of the Houston Bar Association, Houston Trial Lawyers Association and Texas Association of Civil Trial and Appellate Specialists. He is currently the managing partner of Abraham, Watkins, Nichols, Sorrels Agosto & Aziz, where he has practiced since 1990 and held the MP position for two decades.
“I understand service and that there is more to life than just a paycheck,” the Houston personal injury lawyer told The Texas Lawbook during an interview last week in his firm’s offices.
He survived one of the most contentious State Bar elections Texas has seen in decades, winning by the widest margin of victory in State Bar election history.
But the challenges are far from over. Sorrels takes the reins at a time the State Bar faces a number of hurdles — including a federal lawsuit challenging mandatory membership fees and the “bar bashing” that made him run for president in the first place.
“I didn’t even plan to run, but there had been a fair amount of negative and untrue rhetoric about the bar and about the people who were involved in the bar,” he said. “I’m not here to defend anybody, although I’m not going to let our profession be demonized unless it deserves to be demonized. One of the things I want to do is be sure we end the bar bashing, but also accept the fact that there are critics of the bar who have legitimate concerns and complaints and see if we can fix those.”
One way he hopes to address — or at least minimize — bar bashing is by adding as much value as possible to lawyers’ State Bar membership.
“Customer service is a critical component of the State Bar, and lawyers are the biggest customer base of the State Bar, so let’s give them good customer service,” he said.
Sorrels said the State Bar recently negotiated a discount for lawyers who take the Vonlane bus between Dallas, Houston, Austin and San Antonio.
“We just got our first numbers back and there have been [around] 800 trips taken by lawyers,” Sorrels said. “I just saw that the Vonlane expanded their trips. I am convinced… that part of that is because more lawyers are traveling with it. It’s more convenient than going to the airport.”
From Soccer Athlete to Lawyer
Though Sorrels was born in Virginia, he was the son of two native Texans. During childhood, Sorrels had no particular hometown roots. His father’s career as an officer in the U.S. Army moved the family around a lot — although they did maintain their contact with Texas by returning to the Dallas area – his mother’s hometown – during his father’s two tours in Vietnam.
During those years, Sorrels developed a knack for making new friends and striking up conversations with just about anyone in each new place – a skill that has served him well in his law career.
“When you live in that life of continued flux, you are learning how to meet people and talk to folks on a regular basis,” Sorrels said. “I can talk to pretty much any stranger out there today. I don’t need to be surrounded by a group of close friends to feel comfortable.”
After his father retired as a colonel, Sorrels’ family moved to Houston in time for his junior year of high school. He has not left the Bayou City since. At some point in high school, Sorrels decided he wanted to become a lawyer.
A defining life moment came upon high school graduation, where he decided to abandon his plans to attend Texas A&M University to attend the much smaller Houston Baptist University, a Division I school that offered him a soccer scholarship.
“It’s probably not the conventional path to choose HBU over the world-renowned Texas A&M with their alumni association, first-class athletics and terrific educational reputation,” he said.
He thrived in the smaller-class environment of HBU, where he studied political science. He decided while there he wanted to “go into some type of trial law.”
His grades could have helped land him anywhere, but Sorrels made another momentous life decision when he decided to attend South Texas College of Law. He chose it over other higher-ranked schools in Texas because he felt he would receive the best training to become a trial lawyer in the backyard of the city he wanted to spend his legal career.
“If I had someone advising me, they would have told me to go to the highest-ranked school possible to give me the best opportunity,” he said. “That wouldn’t have been the advice that was best for me. The advice that was best for me was to go where my heart was.”
He began his legal career at Fulbright & Jaworski, where he defended doctors, insurance companies and businesses in civil suits. He said he arrived at a fortuitous time because he inherited heavy trial dockets by two colleagues on his trial team who left right when he arrived. He went to trial twice within six weeks of getting licensed. He tried 19 total cases during his time at Fulbright.
“I got a completely mature docket [and] inherited again another break in life,” he said.
Three years later, he decided to convert his practice to the plaintiffs’ side of the bar because he felt he could “help more people” and “make the world a safer place.” He joined the firm that now includes his name in 1990 to fulfill that dream. He hasn’t looked back.
Since moving to the plaintiffs’ side, Sorrels has won a $4.2 million settlement for the family of a University of Texas student who died after drinking multiple bottles of liquor during a fraternity hazing by Lambda Phi Epsilon. He also helped obtain an $88 million settlement for the families of two of 23 elderly nursing home residents who died in a bus fire while evacuating from Hurricane Rita.
Sorrels has also obtained a number of notable medical malpractice wins, including two he tried several years ago within two months of each other.
One was a $1.9 million jury verdict he obtained for a woman who received a botched hysterectomy at a Houston area medical clinic that left her with irreversible injuries. At least half of the procedure was performed by a resident without her knowledge. Two of her organs, including her bowel, were perforated. The injuries were not discovered until three days later, at which point she was septic and her injuries were irreversible. She spent three weeks in a coma as a result, and once she woke, spent months re-learning to walk, talk and fend for herself.
His biggest moment in the courtroom came a number of years ago when a jury awarded $6 million to three workers at an Abermarle Corp. chemical plant in Pasadena — $1 million over what he requested from the jury.
“It was more than we asked for on a very challenging case where very little money was offered to try to settle the case,” he said.
Sorrels is currently representing the widow of Joshua Cummings, a 36-year-old executive at CenterPoint Energy who died from a shooting range accident in Cypress in December 2017. Cummings was the father to 5-year-old triplets at the time he died.
Sorrels said Cummings went to the Hot Wells Shooting Range on the morning of Dec. 12 before work. While he was getting his things out of his car, a 21-year-old employee was working on another customer’s loaded hunting rifle inside. The gun accidentally discharged and the bullet went through the wall, striking Cummings as he was walking through the parking lot.
Sorrels sued the Hot Wells Shooting Range, its owner and several other entities on behalf of Kathleen Cummings and the children. The case is set for trial this fall in Harris County before Judge Donna Roth in the 295th District Court.
The employee, 21-year-old Tyler Sutton, was indicted for manslaughter last month by a Harris County grand jury.
“That’s probably the [case] that’s closest to my heart right now,” said Sorrels, a father of five himself.”
Sorrels’ firm also represents more than 450 victims of the 2017 Las Vegas shooting, the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history. They’re up against MGM Resorts International, which owns Mandalay Bay, where Stephen Paddock opened fire on a crowd of thousands attending the Route 91 Harvest Festival. He killed 58 and left more than 500 injured before ending his own life.