Biglaw

The Wild West Is Alive And Well And It's The Houston Energy Law Market

There's a little legal boom going on in Texas.

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While most of the headlines focus on last week’s announcement that Hunton & Williams and Andrews Kurth are going full Voltron and creating Hunton Andrews Kurth, it’s worth noting that this dramatic move fits right in with the Houston legal market these days.

Mergers, new offices, aggressive lateraling — Houston has it all. And why not if you’ve got a high demand market paying New York salaries. From the Houston Chronicle:

As oil prices rise, so are the deals, and law firms are scrambling to hire experienced energy lawyers with established clients who will follow them. This year’s chair jumping is so intense it almost takes a score card to keep up.

Oil prices are looking to be up around 60 percent from their 2016 lows. Still, they’re not even close to the $100+/barrel highs of earlier this decade. Perhaps that’s something to look forward to.

Hurray?

Sidley is a relative newcomer to Houston, opening its office here six years ago with seven partners lured from seven different firms. Today the firm, which has grown to 63 lawyers, is trying to fill holes in its energy practice so it can offer a wider range of expertise from mergers to regulatory issues to financing deals.

“It’s almost like a football team,” said energy lawyer Brian Bradshaw, who recently joined Sidley from Morgan Lewis. The organization needs a variety of skills, not only quarterbacks, running backs and receivers, but also linemen, punters and special teams players.

Helpful hint: don’t be the Sidley lawyer they consider the punter.

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“Many of us were lifers at where we started our careers,” said George Vlahakos, part of a recent wave of lawyers leaving Andrews Kurth, an old Houston firm that recently said it would merge with Hunton & Williams.

That dynamic of starting at one firm after finishing law school and staying until retirement is disappearing. Firms dissolve and rivals merge, providing opportunities for other firms to pick up experienced lawyers known as “laterals,” who have “sticky” clients. “Sticky” is the industry term for clients who won’t leave their lawyers, no matter where they go.

“Disappearing”? This is sepia-tinted pablum. Biglaw has operated as a pyramid scheme for over a hundred years. Show me an aging lawyer that started at the firm as a law clerk and I’ll show you the 90 percent of that lawyer’s colleagues that lateraled, moved in-house, opened up a solo shop, went to the government, or simply fell by the wayside. Biglaw has never offered a dynamic of “starting at one firm after finishing law school and staying until retirement.” These homegrown top partners are the exceptions that prove the rule. They are a handful of a handful.

Not to say the Houston market isn’t doing a real number on those lifers. That elite population may dwindle a bit as a hot market shuffles a higher proportion of partners than before, but let’s not act like this is the near-extinction of the Buffalo or anything.

But that analogy aside, if you’re a young lawyer and agnostic about where you want to build your career, to borrow an old saying, “Go West, young people. And kind of South… unless you’re already on the West Coast, then go East.”

That didn’t work as neatly as planned. Maybe Davy Crockett has the better quote, “You may all go to hell and I will go to Texas.”

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As energy recovers, law firms move to get piece of the action [Houston Chronicle]

Earlier: Biglaw Merger Creates New 1,000 Lawyer Firm

HeadshotJoe Patrice is an editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.

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