A five-member corporate team has departed from Locke Lord in Dallas for O’Melveny & Myers, the Los Angeles-based firm announced Wednesday.
Joining O’Melveny is Dallas partner Whit Roberts, who has experience in a broad range of merger and acquisition, corporate finance and other corporate and joint venture transactions. He has also been a member of Locke Lord’s executive committee and former deputy managing partner of the Dallas office.
Most recently, in December, Roberts advised Advance Research Chemicals Inc. on its acquisition by Houston-based Inhance Technologies, a polymer materials provider backed by Aurora Capital Partners.
Roberts also represented Deca Dental on its funding by Blackstone Tactical Opportunities last year and Dallas-based real estate and hotel manager Ashford Inc. on its completed combination with Remington Holdings in 2019.
O’Melveny also tapped another longtime Locke Lord partner, Jack Jacobsen, who has been with Locke Lord for 34-plus years.
Jacobsen advised natural gas producer Comstock Resources Inc. on its sale of its Bakken Shale assets to Northern Oil & Gas Inc. for $154 million last year and its purchase of Denham Capital-backed Covey Park for $2.2 billion with the help of an investment by Dallas Cowboys’ billionaire owner Jerry Jones, among other matters. He also counseled Alamo Drafthouse on its bankruptcy last year.
Others departing include Jason Schumacher, an oil, gas, energy and transactional partner at Locke Lord, where he has been for seven years. Before that, he was a partner at Dentons for three years and he started his career at Patton Boggs, where he spent six years.
Schumacher advised Dallas-based Kosmos Energy in its $150 million production prepayment agreement with the commodities trading group Trafigura Trading in 2020. He also counseled Burk Royalty Co on its sale of East Texas oil and gas assets to ETX Energy and Comstock’s purchase of Covey Park with Jacobsen.
Partner Chrissy Williford Metcalf has also moved to O’Melveny. She started her career at Linklaters and at Andrews Kurth, where she spent seven years as an associate before joining Locke Lord as partner in 2018. She worked on the Ashford deal with Roberts and Dallas health platform Naturally Slim’s sale to the Riverside Co., also with Roberts.
While at AK, Metcalf handled numerous add-on acquisitions for Lexitas, a nationwide provider of litigation support services, helping the company expand beyond Texas into New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Delaware and California.
Rounding out the five-partner team is Will Becker. He spent almost 11 years as a partner at Andrews Kurth and then joined Locke Lord, also in 2018.
Becker worked on the Enhance deal with Roberts; Solutions by Text attracting $35 million in funding led by Edison Partners, also with Roberts; Comstock on its Bakken sale and its purchase of Covey Park with Schumacher and Jacobsen; the Deca deal, with Roberts; and Naturally Slim’s sale with Roberts and Metcalf, among other matters.
O’Melveny Chair Brad Butwin said the new partners “bring long records of leadership in the Texas bar and in the Dallas community.
“They are trusted advisors whose clients turn to them again and again on their most important matters, and their dedication to public service meshes perfectly with the O’Melveny culture. Their top-rated practices complement our own, giving us greater ability to meet the evolving needs of our diverse clients in Texas, and around the world.”
O’Melveny opened its Dallas office in June with four former Norton Rose Fulbright partners, saying it had office space for up to 50 lawyers. It launched its Austin office with lawyers from Thompson & Knight earlier last summer. The firm has further expanded in Texas with partners from Baker Botts and King & Spalding.