© 2013 The Texas Lawbook.
By Mark Curriden, JD
Senior Writer for The Texas Lawbook
(September 27) – Seven Texas lawyers or lawyers with heavy connections to Texas made the 2013 edition of the Forbes 400 richest people in America.
To be clear, only one of the nine – Joe Jamail of Houston – made his money practicing law, although four of the billionaires practiced law along the way. Five became wealthy by starting private equity firms, hedge funds, Internet companies and other business.
Courtesy of UT Law
Two of the billionaires did it the old fashion way: they inherited it.
The highest-ranking Texas lawyer on the Forbes list is Richard Kinder, the CEO and chairman of Houston-based Kinder Morgan, which is the largest pipeline company in the U.S. The magazine ranks Kinder at number 39 with a net value of $10.2 billion. Kinder owns a 23 percent stake in the company he co-founded, which last year purchased El Paso Corp. for $23 billion and acquired Copano Energy for $5 billion earlier this year. Bad news for Texas law schools seeking donors: he graduated from the University of Missouri School of Law.
Coming in at number 77 on Forbes listing is Randa Williams, a University of Houston Law Center graduate and daughter of Enterprise Products Partners co-founder Dan Duncan. Williams, who was a lawyer at Bulter & Binion and then at Houston-based Brown Sims, is worth an estimated $5.5 billion.
Forbes ranks Dallas businessman Robert Rowling number 93 on its list with $4.9 billion in net worth. Rowling, an SMU Dedman Law School graduate, is the founder of TRT Holdings, the holding company for Omni Hotels and Gold’s Gym.
Trevor Rees-Jones, the founder and chairman of Chief Oil and Gas in Dallas, ranks 103 and has a net worth of $4.4 billion, according to Forbes. An SMU Dedman School of Law graduate, Rees-Jones was a successful bankruptcy lawyer at Dallas-based Thompson & Knight before leaving to start Chief Oil in 1994. His father, Trevor Williams Rees-Jones was a long-time partner at the firm that is now known as Locke Lord.
Fort Worth resident David Bonderman makes the Forbes list at number 209 with a net worth at $2.6 billion. The Harvard Law School graduate and U.S. Justice Department civil rights lawyer is the co-founder of Texas Pacific Group (now called TPG Capital), a private equity firm with $55 billion in assets under management. Bonderman, who spends much of his time on the west coast, turned 70 last November. Paul McCartney and Robin Williams performed at his exclusive birthday party at the Wynn Resort, which was attended by more than 1,000 guests.
SMU Dedman Law School alum and Dallas banker Gerald Ford ranks 296 on the Forbes list with $1.9 billion in net worth. The son of a Texas farmer, Ford brought his first bank in 1975 for $1.2 million and sold it a few years later for a tidy profit — $80 million. He is now the managing member of the Ford Financial Fund and the chairman of Hilltop Holdings.
Finally, there’s the most successful trial lawyer in the history of the world: Joe Jamail. Forbes puts the University of Texas alum’s net worth at $1.6 billion, which ranks him number 342.
Just missing the list in 2013 is former Akin Gump lawyer and Dallas businessman Todd Wagner. The magazine puts his net worth at a mere $1.2 billion, which is $100 million shy of being on the list. Wagner started an Internet company in 1995 with a guy named Mark Cuban. The pair sold Broadcast.com to Yahoo in 1999 for $5.7 billion.
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