By Mark Curriden, JD
Senior Writer for The Texas Lawbook
(December 31) – Prominent Houston energy lawyer Donald Looper and the law firm he co-founded 28 years ago, Looper Reed & McGraw, announced Tuesday they were parting ways effective immediately.
Looper Reed Managing Partner J. Cary Gray, in a written statement, said that Looper left the firm over “managerial differences” and that the firm, which now has 120 lawyers in Dallas, Houston and Tyler, has been renamed Gray Reed & McGraw.
Both Gray and Looper said that the differences relate to the firm’s decision to expand its corporate transactional practice.
“No one worked harder than Don Looper to build the great firm the founders dreamed of building at the beginning, and no one deserves more credit than Don for the progress made towards creating a stable, durable firm that does indeed survive the founders’ practice of law,” Gray said in a statement to The Texas Lawbook.
“Over time, however, Don began to advocate a different management philosophy for the firm’s future,” he said. “While our litigation/family/employment practices and our industry-specific transactional practice areas, such as energy and healthcare, have grown and flourished, Don insisted on keeping our corporate practice relatively small, certainly as compared to the needs of our clients and other practice areas within LRM.
“Eventually, a question arose as to whether the next generation of lawyers would be allowed to make the decisions we collectively believe are essential to sustain a thriving firm that meets the needs of our clients,” Gray said. “While nobody is right or wrong, the firm’s board reluctantly concluded these differences of philosophy are irreconcilable.”
Looper, who was a shareholder at the firm and the head of its corporate law practice, said he and Houston lawyers Jim Reed and Jim McGraw left a larger firm in 1985 to start a smaller firm with a closer culture – a culture he said changed at Looper Reed as the firm grew larger over the past decade.
“I love practicing law and I like to have fun with my clients,” he said. “I felt great last night when I went to bed and I had a great night’s sleep. So, I know I made the right decision.”
In an internal memo dated December 31 sent to all lawyers at Looper Reed, Looper said he and the founders “had a vision for creating a firm that wasn’t the biggest, but that would attract great lawyers and people with whom we wanted to have lunch.
“Today I am announcing my resignation from Looper Reed & McGraw as I begin, once again, to build a firm with those same dreams, where quality legal services and having fun, with clients and our colleagues, matter and where everyone shares in creating the vision for the future,” Looper said in his memo. “I am sad to leave behind so many people who have been such an important part of my life for so many years. You are family and always will be.”
Looper said he plans to temporarily share office space with his long-time friend and prominent Houston trial lawyer Martin Beirne at Beirne, Maynard & Parsons in Houston.
Gray said that Looper made the decision to leave and that the firm’s board accepted his resignation.
“While Don’s resignation leaves us deeply saddened, we are fortunate that none of our attorneys has ever been responsible for so much of our business that a departure would destabilize the firm,” Gray said in the firm’s official press release.
“We all thought the dream of building a great law firm that will survive our own practices of law could be completed before the mantle was fully passed to the next generation of lawyers,” he said. “That was not to be. Sometimes in life people grow apart, but we wish Don the very best in whatever is next for him.”
