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Texas In Brief
Texas In Brief
Texas identifies 578 of the state’s finest practitioners in 24 practice areas. Although a proportion of these are based in the large metropolitan areas of Dallas, Houston and Austin, the publication also recognises the important role a number of other cities play in the state’s vibrant business and legal market. The US Census Bureau estimated that the population of Texas had reached 23,507,783 in July 2006, ranking it second behind California, and with a total area of 268,581 square miles Texas is the second largest state after Alaska.The Lone Star State’s geographical centrality between the East and West coasts makes it an attractive place to do business and Fortune Magazine’s 2007 ranking of the United States’ largest corporations by revenue reveals that 56 of the Fortune 500 are headquartered in the state, just one short of New York’s total.
Aviation, aerospace and manufacturing all loom large while the state also boasts a rich array of hi-tech companies – the Austin suburb of Round Rock is home to Dell and many computing and semiconductor companies have operations in the surrounding area, known as the ‘Silicon Hills’. Health care is another prominent sector in the state, driven in part by the prominence of Houston’s Texas Medical Center, the largest medical district in the world with 45 medical institutions, 13 of which are hospitals and two of which are specialised patient facilities. As one would expect, however, the greatest focus is on the energy sector as well as oil and gas equipment and services. According to the Energy Information Administration, a statistical agency of the US Department of Energy, Texas leads the US in fossil fuel reserves, boasting almost one quarter of the crude oil and three-tenths of the natural gas reserves of the US. The state’s refineries can process more than 4.6 million barrels of crude a day and companies such as Exxon Mobil, ConocoPhillips, Valero Energy, Marathon Oil, Halliburton and Plains All American Pipeline are all headquartered in the state.
These industries, and the companies associated with them, consequently provide a great deal of work for the firms and individuals featured on the following pages. Our research identifies a wide array of legal talent within the state, with boutique and specialist outfits rubbing shoulders with some of the legal profession’s most recognised firms. The publication also features some of the industry’s most respected practitioners in over twenty practice areas. Using each chapter as a lens, we are able to highlight certain firms that stand out from the pack based on the number of partners we identify.
Editorial
Editorial: Texas
Editorial: Product Liability in Texas
Texas remains a hive of activity for product liability litigation, dominated on the whole by established Texas firms. Beck Redden & Secrest LLP is one such example, represented by three lawyers in its Houston office. Its case record includes the defence of a multinational corporation in five recent trials, in which the plaintiffs alleged that the company defectively designed, manufactured and marketed respiratory equipment that had failed to protect them from exposure to silica dust. The client was held liable in none of the cases.
Editorial: Project Finance in Texas
Nine individuals at seven firms form this project finance chapter. They make the grade thanks to a proven record representing sponsors and lenders in project financing and refinancing transactions. Six of the nine also feature in the oil & gas chapter, demonstrating the strength of the energy – more specifically oil and gas – industry in Texas.
Editorial: Real Estate in Texas
Continuing expansion in the increasingly competitive real estate sector ensures that this is one of the bestrepresented practice areas in the publication, and a core competency for many of the law firms listed here; many of which have their roots in the state and have grown alongside its cities. Participants “could not say enough good things” about Vinson & Elkins LLP, a Texan big-hitter with “a real estate practice that ranks with the premier firms in the country”.
Editorial: Trademarks in Texas
Trademarks have become an increasingly important consideration for global business and companies are looking to protect their IP portfolios. As befits a large industrial state, trademarks are big business in Texas, and this is reflected in the quality of lawyers dedicated to this area.
Profiled Firms
Firm Profiles: Texas
Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP
Akin Gump’s Texan roots stretch back to its inception in 1945, when Agents Richard Gump and Robert Strauss left the FBI to open Gump & Strauss law firm in Dallas.
Andrews Kurth LLP
Andrews Kurth LLP has grown from a small Houston-based partnership formed in 1902 under the name Andrews & Ball, to an international firm with over 400 lawyers in nine offices.
Baker Botts LLP
Baker Botts LLP is Texan through and through. It can trace its history to the earliest days of Texas, when founding partner Peter Gray was admitted to the bar of the Republic of Texas in 1840, just three years after the city of Houston was founded. The firm became Baker & Botts in 1874, and retained that name until 2000 when it took on the title it has today.
Bracewell & Giuliani LLP
The firm we know today as Bracewell & Giuliani LLP was founded in 1945 in Houston, under the name of Bracewell & Tunks. Today the firm has approximately 400 lawyers practising in 10 offices across the US, the UK and Kazakhstan, hitting the headlines in 2005 with the opening of a New York office, headed by the former New York City Mayor, Rudolph Giuliani.
Fulbright & Jaworski LLP
Fulbright & Jaworski LLP is an international law firm with an enviable position in its home market.
Focus On Corporate Counsel
Corporate Counsel Q&A: Texas
Texas Corporate Counsel: Michael Nichols
Senior vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary, Sysco Corporation
Sysco is based in Houston and provides food and related products and services to approximately 390,000 restaurants, health care and educational facilities, lodging establishments and other customers. Sysco’s operations, supported by 47,500 associates, are located throughout the United States and Canada and include broadline companies, specialty produce and custom-cut meat operations, Asian cuisine foodservice distributors, hotel supply operations, and chain restaurant distribution subsidiaries that serve both domestic and international locations.