K&L Gates announced Thursday that it has beefed up its energy practice in Texas with several familiar faces.
A team of four partners and one counsel led by Jeff King, who led Winstead’s energy practice, have joined K&L Gates. King and partners Jamie Bryan and Chris Brown and counsel Mitchell Murphy have worked together since their days at Hughes & Luce and later K&L Gates. They moved to Winstead in 2011.
Also joining them in their return to K&L Gates is partner Elizabeth Tiblets.
King noted that K&L Gates offered a better platform for his team’s energy practice, which has become more national through the years.
“We will have an opportunity to represent existing and future clients in multiple production areas around the United States that were previously difficult for our group to access,” he said.
Over the last few years, King has observed a resurgence of royalty and joint interest billing litigation that he expects will continue as various fields begin to mature and infrastructure is constrained.
King is also seeing new disputes related to contract formation in the buying, selling and leasing of hydrocarbon producing properties. He attributes this to the “pervasive use of email and other electronic means in the negotiation process.
“There are disagreements occurring over whether or not parties to a negotiation have consummated an enforceable agreement when the primary communication tool has been email and more traditional agreements have not been signed,” he added.