When it comes to practicing law, Elizabeth Hawkins has done just about everything.
She did labor and employment defense work at one of Texas’ largest corporate law firms. She managed civil litigation and human resources for the Houston City Attorney’s Office. She was a plaintiff’s lawyer suing pipeline companies over unpaid franchise fees.
Now Hawkins is the assistant general counsel at Targa Resources, a Houston-based midstream company with a $9.3 billion market cap.
“My boss says I’m doing my penance for being a plaintiff’s lawyer,” she said.
During the past decade, Hawkins has gone from a part-time contract lawyer at Targa to being a critical legal counselor to the company’s executives. She is lead in-house counsel on state and regulatory matters and updated the business’s ethics and corporate compliance programs. She is the top lawyer on matters related to human resources and construction and development activities. And she supervises all civil litigation.
“I came to Targa as a contract lawyer and knew nothing about oil and gas,” she said. “I love working with field teams to keep our people safe and working with HR to keep people happy. That means fewer claims.”
For her extraordinary efforts, Hawkins has been named a finalist for Senior Counselor of the Year for a large legal department in the 2019 Houston Corporate Counsel Awards.
“Elizabeth has been instrumental in various aspects of the company’s growth and success over the past decade,” Bracewell partner Mark Lewis wrote in nominating Hawkins for the award.
“She has spearheaded the legal efforts at developing some of the company’s most important projects in recent years, including the Grand Prix natural gas liquids pipeline and other large infrastructure projects,” Lewis wrote. “Elizabeth has often been at the forefront of the company’s dealings with state and federal regulators, including the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in connection with the company’s various interstate natural gas and liquids infrastructure projects.”
Hawkins was born and raised in St. Joseph, Michigan, the headquarters of Whirlpool Corp. Her father was a production scheduler for a small manufacturing company. Her mother was a keypunch operator for a major manufacturing company.
“My husband had just started law school himself, and I became fascinated with what he was learning,” she said. “I knew I wanted a graduate degree and I thought law was as good as any other.”
Hawkins received her law degree from the University of Houston Law Center in 1988 and later went back to get a master’s of law in energy, environment and natural resources.
Her first legal job was in the labor and employment section at Houston-based Vinson & Elkins, where she worked for more than three years.
In 1992, the City of Houston hired Hawkins to be its first assistant city attorney managing civil litigation and human resources.
Three years later, Hawkins left the government to be a plaintiff’s lawyer. She represented municipalities suing pipeline companies over franchise fees and also handled several premises liability cases.
One of Hawkins’ biggest courtroom victories came in 1998 when she and her partner represented the City of Edinburg, Texas, in a case against several energy companies for allegedly violating a franchise agreement that would have paid the city 4% of the sale of gas.
The trial lasted three months, and the jury deliberated nearly four days before returning with a verdict of $13 million.
“Putting a client through a three-month trial is a big task,” she said. “When the jury returned with the verdict, it was a big relief and I felt great for the client.”
In 2007, Hawkins took her legal skills to Targa, where she handled regulatory approvals and the regulatory aspects of the commercial agreements involving the Grand Prix pipeline.
“Elizabeth has also handled the restructuring of the regulatory treatments of the Houston Gathering System, which moves various NGLs between Mont Belvieu, Texas, and dock facilities located in the Houston Ship Channel,” said Bracewell partner Kirk Morgan, who joined in Hawkins’ nomination.
Hawkins also played a key role in Targa’s Magellan FERC proceedings dealing with standards of conduct type issues and she worked on regulatory issues associated with certain crude oil systems in West Texas where she managed intra- and interstate jurisdictional issues.
“Elizabeth has been instrumental in dealing with federal, state and tribal matters in North Dakota in connection with Targa’s crude oil assets that they acquired five or six years ago,” Morgan wrote. “She has been the point person on all these legal matters.”
Hawkins said that she is the proverbial turtle on the fence post.
“I didn’t get here by myself,” she said. “I like my team members to be successful. If our lawyers are successful and happy, our company will be successful.”