Paul Hastings announced Wednesday that it has added Christopher Richardson, formerly a partner at White & Case, continuing the expansion of the firm’s global energy and infrastructure practice.
Richardson is a veteran oil & gas transactions and projects lawyer of more than two decades, including more than six years as head of the energy and infrastructure projects practice in the Americas, at White & Case.
Having earned a JD in 2004 from the University of Virginia School of Law, he has worked as outside legal counsel and in-house: including eight years with Vinson & Elkins before moving on — first to Oxy as senior counsel in Houston and then to Abu Dhabi as general counsel for Mubadala Petroleum.
Richardson’s experience is expansive. He’s worked on upstream and midstream transactions, global energy transactions, complex project development, construction agreements for on-shore and off-shore projects, global supply chain issues, regulatory matters and dispute resolution.
Since leaving White & Case in March 2024, Richardson had been splitting time between Houston and Durham, North Carolina, as CEO of 8 Rivers Capital, a developer of industrial scale decarbonization technologies. So, why the return to corporate law?
“I actually really enjoyed being a CEO. It was a nice change. I enjoyed the market I was working in,” Richardson told The Texas Lawbook.
“But I really just thought it was the right time to get back into private practice and was very excited to have the opportunity to come back to Paul Hastings in particular. It’s a firm that I’ve been watching grow for many years now in Texas and in my practice area, energy and infrastructure. And I’ve had so many friends, friends going back to when I started Vinson & Elkins 20 years ago in Houston, who had moved over there. Friends from White & Case had moved there. Friends from other firms had moved there.”
Since January 2024, Paul Hastings has more than tripled its presence in Texas. The firm now has about 90 lawyers in its offices in Houston and Dallas, with more Texas hires in the pipeline, according to Frank Lopez, the firm’s chair in New York.
“I can confidently say, we should be over 100 by the end of the year,” Lopez told The Lawbook Tuesday. “But we kind of feel like we’re just getting started.”
“You know, we’re really committed to building [in Texas], not just because it’s a nice thing to say that we want to be in Texas, but we think it’s a great business opportunity.”
In April, the firm announced a global expansion of its energy and infrastructure practice with three other hires from White & Case — Dinmukhamed (Din) Eshanov, George Kazakov and Xavier Petet, for its offices in Paris and Abu Dhabi. The recruitment of Richardson and the firm’s broader expansion in Texas fits neatly into that vector of strategic development, Lopez said.
“Chris checks all the boxes from a premier talent perspective,” said Lopez. “But he plugs in, not just on the ground in Texas, where he has a great reputation, but he plugs into our broader client base, both in the U.S. and internationally.”
It’s exactly that kind of convergence — of opportunity, resources and familiar places and faces — that is bringing him back into the practice of corporate law, Richardson says.
“I used to live and work in Abu Dhabi. I’ve done a lot of work with sovereigns over the years, both in the Middle East and more broadly. So, having that additional footprint in Abu Dhabi — tied back to Houston, tied to New York, tied to London, the major financial hubs — is really exciting.”
“And I also like the idea that the firm is looking to grow — and has successfully grown, across the practice areas and has very quickly, between Houston and Dallas, become a full-service practice, pretty much, in the Texas market.”
“One of my good friends, Colin Diamond, who was one of the most impressive capital markets lawyers I knew over at White & Case, is at Paul Hastings — splits his time between Houston and New York. And so, it’s just a very compelling roster of people who have been added to the firm in recent years, and I just feel that the momentum is palpable.”
Richardson begins his tenure with Paul Hastings in July, in time for the opening of the firm’s new offices in Houston.