Tony Buzbee, managing attorney at The Buzbee Law Firm in Houston, has litigated a long list of high-profile cases with an impressively high win rate.
His successes and awards for great lawyering abound. He attributes his accomplishments mostly to hard work and willingness to take risks, with a bit of natural talent mixed in.
“I’m the kind of person who wakes up with my eyes wide open, and my feet hit the floor and I’m ready to go,” Buzbee told Texas Inc. “I have lots of energy and drive, and I already don’t sleep much. When I’m working on a case, it fills my mind and I’m always thinking about how to advance the ball.”
Buzbee’s latest pursuit is running for Mayor in Houston, but we left politics aside and talked to him about his early days, experiences as a trial lawyer and what motivates him to take cases and win.
Q. What do you like about being a lawyer?
A. I like being a change agent. A disrupter. I like helping someone who hasn’t been dealt a fair hand and trying to rectify that. That’s what I enjoy the most. So usually, if I don’t feel like we are in that position, I won’t take the case. If I believe a client has been wronged, I’ll take a case to square that. I think everybody wants to believe that there is still justice; I want to believe that too. I don’t allow myself to be jaded and believe it’s just business as usual and the strong always win.
The courtroom is one place in the U.S. and Texas where it doesn’t matter who you are — a highly respected Fortune 100 CEO or someone who folds clothes for a living — everyone should have the same chance. I believe that’s generally true. There have been times when I’ve felt that I was not being treated fairly, but I still believe that the court system is the last bastion where anyone can get a fair shake. If I happen to lose — which obviously I hope not to and work very hard not to — but If I do, I don’t blame the system or the jury. I try to look internally and ask what I did at the front end that twelve people saw differently than I did. As long as the lawyers and judges that participate in the system continue to believe in it, our system will be a place where no matter who you are, you have a fair shot.
Q. What interesting cases is your law firm is working on now?
A. Right now we are representing multiple Mexican states whose governors, during their term in office, allegedly stole billions of dollars from their states’ treasury. We’ve been hired by these states’ new administrations to find these moneys all over the world and repatriate them. That includes finding assets. Whether that’s an apartment in New York City, a home in the Woodlands, a country club-ownership interest, or a bank account in Bermuda — we are on the hunt to find these assets, cash them out, and send the money back to the states that rightfully own them. It’s a big task. There is a sticky political situation in each of the states. It’s like putting together a puzzle and tracing money through this bank, that bank, this bank… We have to get around bank privacy issues. And then there’s the matter of proving that a particular asset was actually purchased with particular stolen money, but not money that rightfully belonged to a particular governor or finance minister or whatever their title was at the time. This has been taking a lot of time.
For the full interview, visit HoustonChronicle.com.