Texas Lawyer Blog

Newsmakers: Kelley Kronenberg expands office in Houston

Kelley Kronenberg recently quadrupled its office space in Houston, says John Schouest, managing partner of the firm’s Houston office.

Schouest says that when Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based Kelley Kronenberg opened its office in Houston in October 2011, only four lawyers worked there. It now has 11, he says.

The space the firm was occupying on the 11th floor of the office building at 1001 McKinney St. in Houston was too small to accommodate the growth, Schouest says. He says the firm acquired the entire third floor of the building and built it out with future growth and ease of communications between the attorneys in mind.

“We love the space,” Schouest says. “It is by far the most practice-friendly space I’ve ever been in in my 25 years of practicing law.”

— Mary Alice Robbins

Robbins is an Austin-based freelance writer and a former Texas Lawyer senior reporter.

Voting in State Bar runoff between Apffel, Fischer ends in 23 hours

Lawyers have until 5 p.m. on May 23 to cast a ballot for the next president-elect of the State Bar of Texas. Online voting is available at texasbar.com.

League City solo Trey Apffel (pictured, left) and Rockport solo Steve Fischer (pictured, right) are competing in a runoff, a first for the State Bar.

State Bar spokeswoman Kim Davey says the election results will come out between 7 to 8 p.m. on May 23.

She explains, “Once the voting ends, the organization that handles the tallying of the ballots and the results has to certify the results, and then they let us know.”

The State Bar will notify Apffel and Fischer of the results and then post them on the homepage of texasbar.com.

Apffel says when the results come in, “I’m going to be with my wife, having dinner somewhere.”

When asked whether he’ll celebrate if he wins, Apffel responds, “Yeah, I would think so. I would think that we’ll celebrate a long, hard-fought win, and get ready to go to work.”

Fischer says when the results come in, “I’ll be in route to Austin to meet with a client.”

Fischer says if he wins, he probably won’t celebrate, because, “I have to be in court the next morning.”

-- Angela Morris

Altman Weil survey: Managing partners reveal trends

Nearly all law firm managing partners and firm chairmen who participated in an Altman Weil survey said some legal market trends — including “more price competition” and “focus on improved practice efficiency” — are actually permanent changes in the marketplace.

On the other hand, fewer than half of the managing partners or chairs who responded to the 5th Annual Law Firms in Transition Survey said “holding the line on associate salaries” or “outsourcing legal work” are permanent changes to the marketplace.

Here’s a few more interesting statistics from the survey:

• 66.7 percent of the law firm leaders said the pace of change in the legal profession will increase, but only 12.9 percent of the leaders are “highly confident” their firms are prepared for that change.
• Only 5.3 percent said the partners in their firm are “highly aware” of the challenges of the new legal market.
• 53.6 percent believe the partners in their firm have “low” adaptability to change.
• 56 percent of survey respondents said growth in headcount is a requirement for their firm’s continued success.

The survey was conducted in March and April and made public May 21. It includes responses from managing partners or chairs at 238 U.S. firms, including 37 percent of the 250 largest U.S. firms.

-- Brenda Sapino Jeffreys

Newsmakers: Andrew Melsheimer joins North Dallas Chamber of Commerce board

Thompson & Knight announced May 2 that Andrew Melsheimer (pictured) has been named to the North Dallas Chamber of Commerce board of directors.

Melsheimer is a partner in Thompson & Knight’s international energy practice group in Dallas and focuses his practice on international and oil and gas-related matters. He says he is the author of a blog, Petroleum Passport, that offers his perspectives on what it’s like to be an oil and gas lawyer and other topics.

Melsheimer says his current activities also include serving on the advisory boards of the Institute of Transnational Arbitration and the Institute for International and Comparative Law for the Center for American and International Law.

— Mary Alice Robbins

Robbins is an Austin-based freelance writer and a former Texas Lawyer senior reporter.

Newsmakers: Baker Botts adds attorney experienced in employee benefits, executive compensation

David I. Schiller, an attorney experienced in handling employee benefits and executive compensation issues, joined Baker Botts on May 20 as a partner in the firm’s tax department in Dallas.

“I’m very excited about the new opportunity and the new adventure,” Schill says.

Previously Schiller was a partner in the Dallas office of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, where he says he practiced for 23 years.

Schiller says his practice focuses on all facets of executive compensation matters, including their tax, Employee Retirement Income Securities Act and securities law ramifications. He says he also has experience with transactional work on employee benefits-related areas of mergers, acquisitions, initial public offerings, private placements, credit agreements and plan assets.

After graduating with high honors from Stanford Law School in 1983, he began his legal career at the firm now known as Locke Lord, Schiller says.

— Mary Alice Robbins

Robbins is an Austin-based freelance writer and a former Texas Lawyer senior reporter.

40 years of DTPA, unfair insurance practices protections

It’s hard to imagine, but before 1973, Texas consumers didn’t have much of a cause of action if they bought a bad product or signed up for an insurance policy that wasn’t what was advertised to them.

That all changed on May 21, 1973, when then-Gov. Dolph Briscoe signed the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act (DTPA) and the unfair insurance practices provisions of the Texas Insurance Code, which celebrate their 40th birthdays today.

“It provided basic consumer remedies where there had been deceptive trade practices and breach of warranties for products, goods or services” says Joe Longley about the DTPA.

The amendments to the insurance code provided similar, yet broader, protections for consumers in the insurance context, he notes.

Longley, an Austin solo, knows those statutes better than most, because, as this photo reveals, he was once the 29-year-old head of the Consumer Protection Division of the Texas Attorney General’s office and helped draft both pieces of legislation. That’s him on the left with Briscoe and then-Texas Attorney General John Hill on the far right on May 21, 1973, when the DTPA and the unfair insurance provisions became law.

Before those laws, Texas statutes had little protection to offer consumers except common law fraud, Longley says.

“We had no private remedies, other than common law fraud, which was very difficult to prove, and you could not get attorneys’ fees in common fraud,” which changed with the signing of the bill, Longley says.

“On the whole, Texas still has the strongest consumer/insurance protection of any state in the union,” say Longley, noting that there’s a fight every legislative session — including the current one — to roll back the reach of the laws.

“Those two laws have been chipped away at, but they have never been able to do away with the original intent of the legislation, which was to protect consumers and policyholders from unfair practice.”

— John Council

DLA Piper lawyers travel to Tanzania to teach negotiation skills

Cristopher Farrar (pictured, left), of counsel at DLA Piper in Houston, recently returned from Tanzania, where he was part of a DLA Piper pro bono team that taught negotiation skills to Tanzanian lawyers.

“The basis of the trip was to share some of our international experience and [to] help to develop skills sets in negotiations for the Tanzanian government lawyers,” says Farrar, a project development lawyer.

Farrar says about 10 DLA Piper lawyers from around the world made the trip to Tanzania during the last week in April for the teaching sessions. Most of the Tanzanian attorneys involved work at various government agencies, such as the Attorney General’s office, the prime minister’s office, the tax division, the contract-and-treaties division and the public prosecutor’s office, he says.

He says the Tanzanian attorneys were divided into small groups for mock negotiations sessions, with some representing a government-owned company and others representing a multinational company. His role was advising one of the groups tasked with representing a government-owned company.

In addition to the hands-on experience in negotiations, Farrar says the DLA Piper lawyers wanted to show the Tanzanian lawyers the importance of understanding all aspects of a business matter, not just a discrete part of it.

“We helped them to explore the entire business transactions and look at it from a high level…,” he says. “The attorneys we were working with really enjoyed that aspect, because the attorneys working in a government department, sometimes they don’t get to see the entire transaction.”

Farrar, who joined DLA Piper in May 2012 from Dewey & LeBoeuf, says he has worked internationally in the past, including a year and a half in South Africa and a year in Kuwait.

Farrar says the firm’s pro bono work in Tanzania is part of DLA Piper’s New Perimeter, a global pro bono initiative. For the last three years, DLA Piper lawyers have worked pro bono with students at the Law School of Tanzania in Dar es Salaam.

-- Brenda Sapino Jeffreys

 

Newsmakers: Mark Santos becomes partner in Parsley Coffin Renner

Austin’s Parsley Coffin Renner announced May 6 that Mark A. Santos (pictured) has become a partner in the firm.

Santos says he represents electric and natural gas distribution utilities in complex administrative litigation.

After graduating from the University of Texas School of Law in 2002, he served in the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps for four years, Santos says. He says that after his military service, he joined the former firm of Clark Thomas & Winters in Austin.

Santos says he joined Parsley Coffin in October 2009 when a group of former Clark Thomas attorneys formed the firm.

— Mary Alice Robbins

Robbins is an Austin-based freelance writer and a former Texas Lawyer senior reporter.

James Bond’s Aston Martin may soon be illegal in Texas

One of the coolest espionage gadgets on James Bond’s Aston Martin was the license-plate flipper. At the flip of a switch, the plates on Bond’s silver DB5 would rotate, enabling him to change his car’s identity and avoid being spotted by various cinematic bad guys.

Bexar County DA Susan Reed (pictured) also thinks this is a cool feature — but not as it pertains to cars that travel the roads in Texas. After Mark Gibson, one of Reed’s investigators, spotted a company that was selling license-plate flippers over the internet, she brought it to the attention of the Texas Legislature, she says.

On May 17, the Texas House of Representative passed S.B. 1757, which criminalizes possession of a license-plate flipper, making it a Class B misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail. Distributing or selling a flipper is a Class A misdemeanor, punishable by up to a year in jail.

The bill awaits the signature of Gov. Rick Perry.

Reed (pictured) says Texas doesn’t need people using license plate flippers to avoid law enforcement — or the fees on toll roads, for that matter. But there is one caveat about the proposed law, at least as it applies to Bexar County, she says.

“If James Bond comes to Texas and wants to use the flipper, I’ll give him immunity. I’ve always been a Bond fan. Anybody else can forget it,” Reed says with a laugh.

No word on whether the Lege will consider banning the most lethal feature on Bond’s sport car: the hidden, front-mounted machine guns. Don’t bet on it though. This is Texas, after all.

— John Council

This week in Texas Lawyer

Water Warriors: Local Governments Bring Pollution Suits

Water Warriors: Contingent-Fee Contracts Challenged for Environmental-Enforcement Actions

Summer Associate Survey: 1L Pipeline Power

Litigator of the Week: Dog Bites Man

Work-Life Balance Is Achievable

Newsmakers

VerdictSearch

Miranda Rights Are Not a Luxury

How to Get a Job

Inadmissible

Newsmakers: College of State Bar of Texas to recognize Robert Pelton

When Robert Pelton, co-owner of Pelton Law Offices in Abilene and Houston, saw a need for an ethics hotline for criminal defense attorneys, he convinced the Texas Criminal Defense Lawyers Association (TCDLA) to create one in 2011.

“I get calls day and night from lawyers all over the state,” says Pelton (pictured), chairman of the TCDLA Ethics Committee.

Pelton says his work on the hotline is the reason the College of the State Bar of Texas named him the recipient of the Jim D. Bowmer Professionalism Award for 2012. Merianne Gaston, managing director of the College of the State Bar, says the award is named in honor of the late Jim Bowmer, who originated the idea for the college and is one of its co-founders.

Pelton says that his selection to receive the Bowmer award came as a complete surprise.

“I was in the state of shock,” he says. “I couldn’t believe it . . . . It was very humbling.”

For Pelton, 2012 had been a bad year in terms of his health. He says he had several health problems during the year, including suffering a heart attack in his office on Dec. 21, 2012, which had been predicted to be the day that the world would end.

But Pelton, whose primary area of practice is criminal law, also had cause to celebrate in 2012. Pelton says he got a capital murder charge dismissed against his client in State v. Michael Jackson.

“They had the wrong guy,” Pelton says. “After the judge dismissed his case, he [Jackson] did a moon walk in court.”

Pelton says that U.S. Rep. Ted Poe, R-Houston, a former state district judge in Harris County, called him the “Champion of the Underdog.”

But Pelton was not a likely prospect for a legal career. He says he grew up poor in Abilene and hated school as a youth. The fact that he became a lawyer probably surprised some people, he says.

Before enrolling in law school, he served in the U.S. Army from 1966 to 1972 and was in the 36th Infantry Division. Pelton says he earned his J.D. from South Texas College of Law in 1975.

His activities include serving on the faculty of the Center for American and International Law, Pelton says.

Gaston says the award presentation is scheduled for July 18 during the college’s annual summer school course at Moody Gardens Hotel in Galveston.

— Mary Alice Robbins

Robbins is an Austin-based freelance writer and a former Texas Lawyer senior reporter.

Newsmakers: Lawyer with capital markets expertise joins Sidley Austin

Timothy C. Langenkamp (pictured) joined Sidley Austin as a partner in the firm’s Houston office May 1.

Langenkamp says his principal area of practice is corporate and securities law, with an emphasis on capital markets.

“I have a particular focus on master limited partnerships (MLPs),” Langenkamp says.

He says he handles initial public offerings and capital market transactions for MLPs, which largely are natural resource companies. MLPs operate under complicated tax rules, which limit the kinds of entities that can form these types of limited partnerships, he says.

Langenkamp says he joined Sidley from the Houston office of Andrews Kurth, where he worked for more than 11 years and was a partner.

Langenkamp says he received his J.D. in 1997 and earned a LL.M in 2002. He received both degrees from the University of Houston Law Center.

— Mary Alice Robbins

Robbins is an Austin-based freelance writer and a former Texas Lawyer senior reporter.

Newsmakers: Gruber Hurst Johansen Hail Shank adds associate

Laura M. Fontaine joined Gruber Hurst Johansen Hail Shank in Dallas on April 22 as an associate.

Fontaine (pictured) says her practice focuses on general commercial litigation and bankruptcy litigation. She represents plaintiffs and defendants.

Before joining Gruber Hurst, she was an associate with the Dallas office of Vinson & Elkins, Fontaine says.

Fontaine says she earned her J.D. from Harvard Law School in 2008. She says that after graduating, she served as a clerk for Judge Vanessa L. Bryant of the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut.

At the conclusion of her clerkship, she worked briefly at the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinic before joining V&E, Fontaine says.

She says she serves on the Judiciary Committee of the Dallas Bar Association.

— Mary Alice Robbins

Robbins is an Austin-based freelance writer and a former Texas Lawyer senior reporter.

Plaintiff in excessive-force taser case lists defendant as “Taser Joe”

It’s hard to imagine a more evocative name for an excessive-force case than Reynaldo Ramirez v. Jose “Taser Joe” Martinez.

That’s the case style of the decision the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued May 15. The judges ruled that Jim Wells County sheriff’s deputy Jose Martinez was entitled to qualified immunity for arresting landscape business owner Reynaldo Ramirez. But they ruled he was not entitled to qualified immunity on Ramirez’s excessive force claim after Martinez allegedly “tased Ramirez in the chest.” Odd nicknames occasionally make it into the style of federal complaints filed by a plaintiff.

“You know, I did it as a little bit of a joke. This is a taser case, and I thought ‘Taser Joe’ was good name,” says Chris Gale, Ramirez’s lawyer and a partner in Gale, Wilson & Sanchez, explaining why he put the nickname in the complaint his client filed in the Southern District of Texas district court.

He adds that, during a deposition, an employee who worked with Martinez testified that Martinez was referred to as “Taser Joe.” But Brian Miller, of counsel at Corpus Christi’s Royston, Rayzor, Vickery & Williams says “Taser Joe” is not a nickname his client goes by.

“It’s something the plaintiffs slapped on” the case, Miller says. “We never put anything like that in the style that we filed and so have two different styles to the case,” Miller says.

Nevertheless, the “Taser Joe” label stuck on the style of the case, from the complaint’s initial filing in a Southern District of Texas district court up to the 5th Circuit.

“It’s always been a higher priority to defeat this case before trial than worry about the effect that this nickname might have on trained judges who are trained to look beyond that kind of thing,” says Miller, who plans to file a motion for en banc review with the 5th Circuit.

-- John Council

What are the large firms paying their summer associates?

Weekly salaries for summer associates at Texas’ largest firms range from $2,100 to $3,700 with most of the firms paying the high end or the equivalent of a $160,000 annual salary.

 Locke Lord is one of the firms paying its summer associates the equivalent of a $160,000 which is the starting salary for the firm’s entry-level full-time associates.

“When I started in 1981, my starting salary was $19,500,” says Janis Loegering (pictured) of Dallas, Locke Lord’s hiring partner and a member of the firm’s executive committee. Loegering says she has been at the firm, or one of its predecessor firms, since graduating from the University of Texas School of Law in 1981. Regarding her $19,500 starting pay she says, “I thought I was a millionaire.”

--Jeanne Graham

What law schools are large firms looking to for their summer associates?

The summer associates at Texas’ largest firms hail from 44 law schools nationwide.

The 66 summer associates at Baker Botts are students at 20 different schools including four Texas law schools.

“We continue to see Harvard, UT, Duke, UVA and Chicago as central schools for our summer program,” says Van Beckwith (pictured) of Dallas, the firm’s partner in charge of recruiting. “Those are schools we are investing in.”

The firm also recruits summer associates at schools where it has relationships, such as the schools in or near the cities where the firm has offices. In California, those schools include the University of California Berkeley Boalt Hall School of Law and Stanford Law School. In Texas, those schools include Baylor University School of Law, the University of Houston Law Center, and South Texas College of Law.

 “The schools that are in our backyard are important too,” he says.

-- Jeanne Graham

Newsmakers: Jones Day welcomes new partner in Houston

David L. Burgert, a trial lawyer who focuses on patent disputes, joined Jones Day as a partner in the firm’s Houston office May 8.

Burgert says that in his 30 years as a lawyer he has been lead counsel on more than 50 cases tried to jury verdicts and has argued appeals in Texas appellate courts and in the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals.

“I started out as a general commercial litigator,” Burgert says. “Beginning in the 1990s, I was able to get a couple of patent cases and found them fascinating.”

Depending on the year, between 70 percent and 90 percent of his work now focuses on patent litigation, he says.

Before joining Jones Day, he was a partner in Porter Hedges in Houston, Burgert says. He says he started his legal career at Vinson & Elkins after graduating from the University of Michigan Law School in 1983.

Burgert says he serves on the board of trustees for Good Will Industries of Houston.

— Mary Alice Robbins

Robbins is an Austin-based freelance writer and a former Texas Lawyer senior reporter.

Newsmakers: Cantey Hanger partner named to Texas Board of Physical Therapy Examiners

Gov. Rick Perry recently appointed Philip A. Vickers (pictured), a partner in Cantey Hanger in Fort Worth, to the Texas Board of Physical Therapy Examiners.

Vickers says that on May 8, the Texas Senate confirmed his appointment, which is for a public member’s spot on the board. The appointment is for a term that expires Jan. 31, 2019.

“I’m excited to serve and do what I can to help the board,” he says.

Vickers says that he had signaled to the governor his willingness to serve on a board. He says he also is chairman-elect of the Tarrant County Bar Foundation Volunteer Attorney Services Committee and serves on the board of Texas Review of Law and Politics and on the pro bono advisory board for Legal Aid of Northwest Texas.

Vickers says he received his J.D. from the University of Texas School of Law in 2005 and served as a clerk for U.S. District Judge Michael Schneider of the Eastern District of Texas in Tyler. He joined Cantey Hanger after the clerkship and is in the firm’s commercial litigation section.

— Mary Alice Robbins

Robbins is an Austin-based freelance writer and a former Texas Lawyer senior reporter.

Newsmakers: Greenberg Traurig attorney elected to HBA Securities Litigation and Arbitration Section Council

Greenberg Traurig shareholder Jennifer Tomsen won election April 29 to the council for the Houston Bar Association’s (HBA) Securities Litigation and Arbitration Section.

Tomsen (pictured) says she was elected for a three-year term on the council and will take office in the fall. The section holds monthly meetings to discuss topics of interest to securities law practitioners, she says.

Tomsen says she also is a board member of the HBA’s Animal Law Section and is co-coordinator for her firm’s pro bono program in the Houston office.

She focuses her practice on commercial and securities litigation and arbitration.

— Mary Alice Robbins

Robbins is an Austin-based freelance writer and a former Texas Lawyer senior reporter.

Newsmakers: Justice Gregory Perkes receives award

The Corpus Christi Bar Association presented the 2013 Judge Paul W. Nye Professionalism Award to 13th Court of Appeals Justice Gregory T. Perkes (pictured) as part of Law Day ceremonies at a May 9 reception.

Perkes says the award, named for former 13th Court Chief Justice Paul W. Nye, is the highest, most prestigious award that the Corpus Christ Bar Association presents.

“I was totally surprised, very humbled,” Perkes says of the honor.

Perkes won election to the 13th Court in 2010 and took office on Jan. 1, 2011. Before being elected to the bench, he was the owner of the Perkes Law Firm, which Perkes describes as a statewide appellate boutique. He says he is board certified in civil appellate law, and his practice focused on appeals, litigation and commercial transactions.

After receiving his J.D. from St. Mary’s University School of Law in 1987, he spent two years working as a briefing attorney for then-13th Court Justice Norman Utter Sr., Perkes says. He says that while working at the court, he got to know Nye, who was the 13th Court’s chief justice at the time.

“I have a lot to live up to,” Perkes says.

— Mary Alice Robbins

Robbins is an Austin-based freelance writer and a former Texas Lawyer senior reporter.