With Houston Launch, Dentons Goes Its Own Way

When Dentons said on September 24 that it plans to open a Houston office this month, the announcement came with a twist: Unlike the bevy of other Am Law 200 firms that have opened outposts in the heart of Texas’s booming energy market in recent years, the megafirm created via the March combination of SNR Denton, Salans, and Fraser Milner Casgrain is doing so without making a single locally based lateral hire—at least to start.

Instead, Dentons plans to staff the new location— an addition already on firm leaders’ minds when the the three-way tie-up took effect earlier this year—with a dozen of its own attorneys, including nine partners now based in either Dallas or Washington, D.C. Dentons attorneys who already advise Houston-based clients out of London, Canada, or any of the 79-office firm’s other locations are also expected to spend time in Houston.

Dentons U.S. managing partner Mike McNamara declined at the time of the announcement to identify which of the firm’s lawyers would be staffing the office because several were still in the process of telling their families about the move, but he said it makes sense for the firm to deploy its own people to Houston before recruiting locally—as most of its rivals have done.

“Other firms have hired laterally and gained clients, we’re doing the inverse,” McNamara said. “We already have Houston clients, we have been representing Houston clients for decades.” (Without providing specifics, he estimates that the firm has roughly 400 clients based in the area.)

While the new office will initially focus on energy sector work, McNamara said he expects to soon have Houston-based litigation, corporate, intellectual property, and regulatory practices. And, he added, the lateral hires to build out those groups will come: “We have quietly initiated a very active recruiting campaign.”

Dentons—whose Houston announcement was quickly eclipsed by the news that it is in advanced merger talks with McKenna Long & Aldridge—is the fourth Am Law 200 firm to enter the booming market this year and at least the 13th to do so since 2010. With few exceptions, its predecessors have indeed relied heavily on attorneys with strong local ties.

K&L Gates, for instance, snagged Fulbright & Jaworski securities practice group head Charles Strauss as founding partner of its Houston branch in February. At around the same time, Reed Smith opened in Houston by plucking a combined total of 12 partners from Fulbright, Sutherland Asbill & Brennan, Jackson Walker, Haynes and Boone, and other firms. Another Am Law 200 firm that moved into the city earlier this year, Katten Muchin Rosenman, did so by bringing on former Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman partner Mark Farley as its Houston managing partner and Tom Kiehnhoff, a former assistant U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Texas.

Without commenting specifically on the Houston strategy being employed by Dentons, Farley says he was motivated to switch firms based largely on what he called Katten’s strong commitment to tap into the local talent pool as a means of being successful.

“What attracted me to Katten was that it had a clear plan and a vision of how to do it,” he says. “Without that, a lot of firms that come to Texas will not succeed. Our strategy is to focus on Texas-based lawyers with well-established reputations.”