After nearly a decade of leadership under Rob Walters, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher’s Dallas office is seeing a change with the appointment of Krista Hanvey and Trey Cox as co-partners-in-charge.
The changeover follows the election of New York corporate partner Barbara Becker as Gibson Dunn’s firmwide chair and managing partner in March and, in the last two weeks, the election of Washington, D.C. partner Joshua Lipshutz as the firm’s chief operating officer, a new role created to assist Becker in leading the elite national firm’s operations across 16 offices worldwide.
The new leadership in Dallas is also part of a larger effort to bring in new leadership that is also diverse.
More than 50% of Gibson Dunn’s local office leaders are now women or persons of color and 75% of the firm’s practice groups are co-chaired by a diverse partner.
“We are committed to ensuring that our lawyers can look upward to see themselves reflected in the leadership of the firm,” Becker said in a statement. “Our local office and practice group leaders will serve as key partners in driving forward the firm’s strategic vision, while further engaging and sustaining our commitment to advancing diversity and inclusion across all functions.”
Cox and Hanvey’s co-leadership is a marriage of the Dallas office’s two bread and butter practices: complex litigation and corporate M&A. But the combined leadership also represents a hybrid of homegrown and recently lateraled talent.
(From Left) Trey Cox and Krista Hanvey
While Hanvey is younger than Cox, she is an 11-year veteran of Gibson Dunn’s Dallas office, where she has spent her entire legal career. Meanwhile, Cox joined Gibson Dunn last April from Lynn Pinker Hurst & Schwegmann, where he spent 23 years of his career and was a name partner at the time of his departure.
“I feel like I have a good sense of the Gibson Dunn model … and the resources we can draw on, and that goes very well with Trey, who comes in with some exciting ideas of new things we can do and new ways we can approach marketing, client engagement,” Hanvey said. “I think our skillsets are complementary and we can work as a team coming at it from different sides.”
Cox’s litigation practice spans across multiple disciplines, from trade secrets to product liability to oil and gas partnership disputes, and he has tried more than 35 cases in his career. Recently, he represented Purdue Pharma in the Oklahoma and Cleveland multi district litigation involving the opioid crisis, which included negotiating a $270 million settlement in March 2019 with the Oklahoma Attorney General two weeks before the parties were to head to trial. The settlement helped found what could become the “M.D. Anderson” for addiction treatment and research at Oklahoma State University.
Hanvey specializes in the benefits and compensation aspects of corporate transactions, and is also one of three partners who heads Gibson Dunn’s firmwide employee benefits and executive compensation practice group. Some big ticket transactions Hanvey has worked on recently include Pioneer Natural Resources’ $6.4 billion purchase of DoublePoint Energy, the all-stock merger between Expro Group and Frank’s International and Blueknight Energy Partners’ sale of its crude oil storage in Cushing, Oklahoma to Enbridge for $132 million in cash.
Walters, who remains a member of Gibson Dunn’s executive committee, said that when Becker became the new firm chair, it became “an ideal juncture” to start “assessing team leadership within the firm’s offices,” and that Cox and Hanvey stood out as natural fits to become the Dallas office’s next leaders.
“Krista is precocious and a relatively young partner but very much operates at a board level … Trey is a born leader, and the two of them operate seamlessly,” Walters said. “It allowed us to diversify our leadership.”
Plus, “they’re well-liked and well-respected,” he said.
At the local, day-to-day level, Hanvey says her new leadership role gives her the opportunity to home in on one of her favorite aspects of the practice of law: “working with people,” which will entail continuing to mentor younger lawyers, focus on recruiting efforts and lateral partner hires.
“I really value individual connection and this role has given me a platform to invite more of that,” Hanvey said.
Meanwhile, Cox said he looks forward to “making sure all our talented individuals have exactly what they need in terms of resources and support to deliver excellent client service” and continuing “to build on Gibson Dunn’s excellent litigation reputation throughout all of Texas.”
Small and nimble, but elite with gradual growth, has been the way of the Gibson Dunn’s Dallas office since it opened in 1984 with 10 lawyers. When Walters, law partner Jeff Chapman and a group of Vinson & Elkins lawyers joined in 2011, the office grew to around 35 attorneys. Today, the Dallas office has 65 attorneys, and is expected to grow to 72 lawyers this fall.
Once Walters became managing partner, he said his and Chapman’s top two priorities were building Gibson Dunn’s reputation for “big ticket” legal work — whether antitrust litigation, securities litigation, arbitrations, intellectual property or M&A.
“We wanted to do those two things at the very highest level,” Walters said. “We dedicated ourselves over the next five or six years to attract that kind of talent from all corners to operate at that level. By all objective reviews, that’s the perch we occupy.”
He acknowledged that nowadays the competition is tighter, with many other elite national firms now in the mix in what Walters calls the “Third Coast.”
“We’re fortunate to have a top tier brand with an elite group of lawyers and so we’ve got a shot at remaining competitive, but in the end it’s all just about relentless service of your clients at the very highest level,” Walters said. “For Trey and Krista, it’s in both of their DNA: that they’re, first and foremost, fabulous lawyers and really bright people, but they are also consumed by client service.”
Editor’s Note: Hanvey handled the incorporation of The Texas Lawbook in 2011.