For the second year, Haynes Boone attorneys participated in the firm’s three-day Trial Academy in late May, where associates worked alongside partners to try a case to a jury of summer associates.
Victor Vital, the Dallas-based global chair of Haynes Boone’s trials practice group, created the Trial Academy last year after seeing young lawyers who needed more courtroom experience. In 2025, only associates participated, but this year, they got to work alongside partners. Vital said that, for the firm, the academy represents a “crucial investment” in its attorneys, offering training that will make them more valuable to clients.
Across two courtrooms, a total of four trials took place downtown at UNT Dallas College of Law, which has well-equipped courtrooms and is close to Haynes Boone’s office. “As long as they’ll have us coming back, we’ll keep coming back year after year,” said Vital. “The law students like it as well, because they get a chance to meet me and other lawyers at the firm, and so it’s a win-win for the law school and for us.”
Haynes Boone’s Trial Academy is not the only program of its kind, as several large law firms offer trial‑skills training, and some choose to send their lawyers to external programs. Vital said the Dallas-based firm has chosen to build and run a comprehensive program in‑house, using its own top trial lawyers from across Texas and the country as faculty.
The firm commits substantial time and resources to make it work, said Vital, acknowledging that senior lawyers spend multiple days teaching instead of billing, and the firm knowingly absorbs that opportunity cost because the Trial Academy as a long‑term investment.
“That level of commitment is there from management, understanding [it is] across four days, and even more because of the preparation,” said Vital, emphasizing that short‑term lost billable hours will be repaid many times over as the Haynes Boone associates who participate become far more effective trial lawyers and, in turn, more valuable to their clients.
The intensity and seriousness of the experience are also evident, said Houston-based senior counsel Lynne Liberato, who served as a judge in one of the academy’s trials. The participants treated it as a genuine trial, focused on actually winning their case rather than merely performing.
“It’s truly a phenomenal opportunity that the firm gives these young lawyers,” she said. “They bring that kind of passion to it.”
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