For the five Khirallah siblings, their paths were somewhat preordained.
With a college professor for a mother and a real estate attorney for a father, it may not be surprising that three of the children went to law school and two into education.
Rachel, the eldest, Ray, who is a few years younger, and David, the youngest of the quintet, each initially went their separate ways, going to different law schools and specializing in different practice areas.
But their individual paths have intersected again, as the three siblings now work together at their own personal injury firm, Khirallah Trial Attorneys in Dallas.
Rachel Khirallah is the oldest and has always wanted to be a real estate lawyer like her father. After earning a bachelor’s degree in 1996 and a master’s degree in 2001, she graduated from Texas Tech University School of Law in 2005 and began her legal career.
For Ray Khirallah, the path to a law career was a bit more winding. He was a sports journalist for a few years and then a high school teacher. But eventually, the law called.
He graduated from Suffolk University Law School in 2007 and went into personal injury law.
And David Khirallah said he remembers being bored listening to his dad on the phone in the car, talking about corporate real estate.
“I wanted to get as far as possible from it,” David said.
David said he began considering a career in the law when his oldest sister started practicing, and that interest grew when he began dating his now-wife when she was in law school. He graduated from Ave Maria School of Law in 2012,and his first job was with Ray at a personal injury firm.
The seeds of working together as a trio were likely planted when Rachel, who was running a real estate and construction litigation firm, found herself interested in personal injury law and started consulting Ray for help.
During the pandemic, Rachel and Ray would work on personal injury cases together. By 2023, they decided to give working together a serious trial run, agreeing to test the arrangement for two years.
Things went well, and after that trial period, Rachel said, “we wanted to formalize it a little bit more.” Not long after, Khirallah Trial Attorneys was formed in Dallas.
Soon, Rachel and Ray began exploring adding another attorney to their team. But it wasn’t until a candidate in Austin asked about the possibility of remote work that the idea of asking brother David, who worked in San Antonio, to join the firm.
“I knew fairly early on that David and I think a lot alike, and Ray and I work really well on cases together,” Rachel said, recalling her thought process about building a firm with her siblings.
David, who had since switched to the defense side of personal injury law, wasn’t immediately receptive to the idea. Or so it seemed.
“I approached David very, very carefully,” Ray said. “I remember when I first approached David, he ghosted me for like two months. I didn’t realize he was getting his ducks in a row and being careful and vetting me and running background checks on me.”
David eventually agreed to join. He still works out of San Antonio, while Ray and Rachel are in Dallas.
The Khirallah Trial Attorneys
Since its official launch in March 2025, Khirallah Trial Attorneys has focused on handling catastrophic personal injury cases. The practice area just made sense: Ray is an expert in personal injury, David has worked on both sides of personal injury cases, and Rachel had already moved on from real estate and construction litigation into PI practice.
“You do have to be a little careful to make sure some old sibling rivalries or habits don’t crop up, but it certainly happens,” Ray said. “I think we were all very careful about keeping those lines separate. If they do start to encroach a little bit, you just kind of recognize it.”
Rachel noted that while work conversations can be naturally muted, but she feels free to share her mind with her brothers.
“That’s a very liberating feeling, and it frees you up to be able to focus on the law and focus on your cases,” Rachel said.
Ray said it can be difficult during depositions, “if you look at your sibling a certain way at a time when you’re not allowed to laugh, and you’re just gonna lose it.”
David added that “there’s no real poker face” with each other.
Looking Forward
It’s not all a family affair at the Khirallah Trial Attorneys.
Ray asked Geoff Keller, who he previously worked with for a decade, to join as managing partner.
“Everything fell into place, and the opportunity presented itself … to work with Ray, again — I couldn’t pass it up,” Keller said.
Keller joined the firm as managing partner in February 2025, a month before the firm officially opened.
Keller and the firm’s paralegal, Rosa Moreno-DeMauro, are the only ones on the team who aren’t family. Ray’s wife, Catherine, also works at the firm as the marketing director.
The siblings said their father, Holland & Knight partner Ray Thomas Khirallah, has been supportive of his children working together.
“He’s over the moon about it. I mean, he’s always been overly supportive, but he’s just thrilled,” David said.
But for now, there are no plans to add dad to the firm. His real estate practice isn’t a fit for the firm in its current form.
“We’ll have to venture outside of just Khirallahs if we want to continue to expand the firm,” Keller said.
As for how the firm has measured success through the first several months, Ray noted revenues are up and said the firm has been able to be very selective about what cases they take on.
But there’s another metric, too.
“A lot of law firms, especially in the personal injury space, will filter certain types of cases down to much younger associates. We just don’t have to do that because we’re so selective. It’s always going to be me [or] David or Rachel or Geoff, a very experienced attorney working on a case,” Ray said. “The goal is to make sure we can continue to do that. The goal is [also] not to kill each other in the process, which, so far, we’ve achieved.”