Lawbook 50: Eight Firms — All Texas, All the Time, All Profitable

Kelly Hart, Porter Hedges, Jackson Walker and five other law firms tracked by the Texas Lawbook 50 are 98 percent Texas operations with only a handful of lawyers outside the state. All eight law firms hit record highs last year in revenues and profits, and they are growing revenue and headcount at the same pace as the mega corporate firms that surround them. This gang of eight generated $1.046 billion in revenue in 2024 — up nine percent from the prior year, according to Lawbook 50 research. “We had another record-breaking year in 2024 — beyond what we reasonably expected,” Porter Hedges co-managing partner Joyce Soliman told The Lawbook.

May 19, 2025 Mark Curriden

Texas Lawbook 50 — Susman Godfrey Scores ‘Second Best Year Ever’ in 2024

Even as Susman Godfrey is engaged in a monumental federal court fight with President Donald Trump that threatens the law firm’s very existence, the Houston-based litigation powerhouse reported 2024 revenues and profits that are once again the envy of their competitors. The firm's revenues last year were down from its record-smashing numbers of 2023, but it was still Susman Godfrey's second-best year in its 44-year history.

April 30, 2025 Mark Curriden

Updated — Susman Godfrey Vows to Fight Trump Executive Order, Simultaneously Scores Win in Billion-Dollar 2020 Presidential Election Defamation Case

The Texas litigation powerhouse Susman Godfrey said Thursday morning that it will fight President Donald Trump’s executive order signed Wednesday that accuses the Houston-based law firm of “egregious conduct and conflicts of interest” and representing “clients that engage in conduct undermining critical American interests and priorities.” The president’s EO came the same day that a Delaware judge gave lawyers for Susman Godfrey and their client, Dominion Voting Systems, a huge court victory against Newsmax Media in a multibillion-dollar defamation lawsuit related to the 2020 presidential election. Last week, Susman Godfrey joined an amicus brief that accuses President Trump of illegally using executive orders to punish law firms who represent clients or causes that he opposes.

April 9, 2025 Mark Curriden

Nine Texas Litigation Firms Sign Amicus Brief in Opposition to Presidential EOs

Stating that their “abiding commitment to preserving the integrity of the American legal system leaves us no choice,” 504 law firms across the U.S. signed an amicus brief Friday supporting the corporate law firm Perkins Coie in its battle for survival against the Trump administration. Of those 504 law firms supporting Perkins Coie, only nine are based in Texas and not a single law firm with a corporate transactional practice signed the brief. The firms include Yetter Coleman, Susman Godfrey, Graves Dougherty, Nachawati Law Group, Aldous Law, Crain Brogdon and Waters Kraus.

April 4, 2025 Mark Curriden

Texas AG Sends Piggyback Demands to Law Firms on DEI Info

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sent a two-page letter to 20 large corporate law firms — 13 with operations in Texas — seeking information about their diversity and inclusion initiatives related to their hiring and promotion efforts that Paxton alleges may have violated state and federal laws regarding discrimination.

April 3, 2025 Mark Curriden

UPDATED: Texas Lawyers Stay Silent on Trump’s Targeting More Law Firms

Even as two large corporate law firms filed constitutional lawsuits against President Donald Trump on Friday to stop his executive orders targeting law firms from taking effect, Texas lawyers — who love to brag that they, like everything else in Texas, are bigger and braver and never back away from a fight — have remained extraordinarily quiet. Out of nearly a thousand lawyers from bar associations, law schools and law firms that signed letters this week decrying the Trump administration's targeting of corporate law firms, only two attorneys and one organization were from Texas. The Texas Lawbook has an in-depth update on the White House's battle against corporate law firms, including mega-firm Skadden Arps' new settlement agreement with President Trump.

March 28, 2025 Mark Curriden

Texas Lawbook Online Forum: How Should Lawyers, Firms and GCs Respond to President Trump’s Challenges?

Large corporate law firms have faced unprecedented actions by a presidential administration during the past two weeks, including five presidential executive orders targeting five law firms, a presidential memorandum directing Attorney General Pam Bondi to “review conduct” by lawyers and firms who engage in “frivolous, unreasonable, and vexatious litigation” against the U.S. government and demand letters sent by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission targeting 20 law firms — 13 of them operating in Texas — seeking their policies and activities regarding diversity and inclusion. The Texas Lawbook seeks your insight and commentary regarding how law firms and the legal profession should respond.

March 28, 2025 Mark Curriden

EEOC Targets 13 Law Firms Operating in Texas for DEI Initiatives

The new acting chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has sent a 10-page letter to 20 different corporate law firms — 13 of them with operations in Texas, though no Texas-based law firms — demanding detailed information about their diversity, equity and inclusion efforts and decision making. The letters, which are addressed to the leaders of each of the law firms, demand that they “fully identify all clients that have diversity preferences or any demographic-related requirements for matters, including but not limited to race or sex requirements for the employees staffed on their matters.”

March 17, 2025 Mark Curriden

Texas Legal Market Free Agency Continues with $5M to $13M Annual Comp Offers

The number of Texas law partners who moved their practice to a new firm during 2024 hit record highs and the trend seems to be continuing in 2025. And for a growing percentage of the lateral moves, this was their second or third jump in recent years. Texas Lawbook data shows that 20 percent more partners at business and litigation practices in Texas jumped to a competitor last year. Three law firms added 10 or more lateral partners in 2024. Twenty-two firms hired five or more lateral partners. Three law firms lost 10 or more partners to competitors in 2024. The Lawbook examines the data and the individual specific lateral moves for trends.

March 12, 2025 Mark Curriden & Christi Trammell

Latham’s Gamechanging 15 Years in Texas: How The Firm’s Houston Office Wrote the Playbook for National Firms to Storm the State

The Houston office of Latham & Watkins had not been open for a year when Ryan Maierson experienced a significant realization. The office opened in February 2010, and as the year progressed, he and the other partners at Baker Botts began to marvel at how easily this "non-native" firm from Los Angeles integrated itself into Texas's established transactional law environment.

Other national firms had previously entered the Texas market. However, with Latham — the second most profitable law firm in the world — something felt different. In less than a year, Latham had achieved what no other national firm had managed to do: it instilled a sense of fear in the long-established Texas firms that had previously dominated corporate law in the Lone Star State.

Fifteen years later, this is the story of how Latham changed the game in Texas.

February 13, 2025 Allen Pusey