Brandt Leibe, partner, King & Spalding

Experience:

• King & Spalding, 2007-present
• U.S. Supreme Court, 2006-2007
• U.S. Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit, 2005-2006

Education:

• Yale Law School, 2005
• Davidson College, 2002

What drew you to a career in law?

People have told me I should be a lawyer for as long as I can remember. But since no one else in my family is a lawyer, I didn't understand what they meant until I was in college. Once I started to understand more about what lawyers really do, I realized everyone was right. I have always loved reading, writing, building arguments, and solving complex problems. No matter our specific areas of law, those are the types of things we do every day as lawyers.

Have you set a specific goal that you want to achieve in the next year?

Continuing to build King & Spalding's government investigations practice in Texas. That involves putting more boots on the ground here in Texas and working for even more Texas-based clients. We are seeing real progress in both areas. Achieving these goals is particularly gratifying for me because I can trace a lot of the progress to my own ideas and efforts, supported with the firm's backing.

What has been your proudest career moment and your biggest hurdle?

The proudest moment in my career was serving as a law clerk at the U.S. Supreme Court for Justice Thomas. It was early in my legal career, but the experience sticks with me and affects how I approach my work every day. The legal issues before the Supreme Court are complex and consequential. Helping Justice Thomas work through those issues for a year was a professionally fulfilling experience that very few lawyers get to have.

The biggest hurdle has been establishing my practice in Houston after moving from Washington, D.C. in 2011. It has been rewarding, but it wasn't easy. In Washington, I had started to put down professional roots and establish a network. Moving to Houston required me to start over to some extent. Overcoming that hurdle was a slow process at first. I had to be deliberate and thoughtful about establishing a professional network in Texas, meeting clients who are based here, and finding colleagues whose practices are similar to mine.

Where do you fit on a 1-10 work-life balance scale with 10 being nirvana? Please explain.

For me, “nirvana” is having plenty of time to spend with my family. Most days, I'm in the office by around 7 am. I try to get to work as early as possible to give myself a chance to leave in time to be home for dinner and bedtime with our little boys (4 and 2). I also do my best to avoid putting in significant hours on weekends. Sometimes weekend work is unavoidable, particularly in crisis situations that can arise in government investigations. But if I'm disciplined with my time at the office during the week, I can usually avoid having to block off big chunks of the weekend for work.

What is the top quality that you've used to succeed in the profession?

The ability to put myself in the shoes of the lawyers across the table from me, whether they are the prosecutors investigating my client or senior officials at the Department of Justice making a policy decision that will affect my clients. Forcefully making arguments for my preferred position or outcome is easy. But most of my adversaries have already thought through my best arguments and their responses to them. To be most effective for my clients, I put myself in the shoes of the people I'm trying to persuade—to understand their goals and motivations—and approach my strategy from that perspective.

Who is your favorite mentor and why?

Chris Wray, who's now the Director of the FBI. Chris recruited me to King & Spalding, and we worked together closely on a number of significant matters for about ten years before Chris left for the FBI. During that time, I had a front-row seat for a master class on advocacy and strategic thinking. On top of that professional training, Chris always had time to discuss anything that was on my mind, whether it was an important issue in one of our cases, my career goals, or being a dad. Even more impressive, Chris had something insightful to say about all the subjects I raised with him. As I think about the type of mentor I want to be, I often find myself reflecting on Chris and working to model myself after him.

What's the best advice anyone has ever given you?

When I was finishing my clerkship at the U.S. Supreme Court, Justice Thomas told me to get out of Washington—to go to a different part of the country to practice. I didn't follow his advice initially. After my clerkship was over, I went to work at King & Spalding in Washington. When my wife and I decided to move home to Houston in 2011, I was anxious about making the move, but I kept replaying Justice Thomas's advice in my head. Having now seen how my practice has changed and grown and over the last seven years, I should have taken the Justice's advice much sooner. Being here in Texas has allowed me to stand on my own two feet and to feel a sense of ownership in what I am accomplishing professionally in a way that I would not have if I had stayed in Washington.

What trends are you observing in the profession that you're excited about?

Continued advances in technology. On my investigation matters, technology is starting to simplify some of the most tedious aspects of our work. It is helping us to find the most relevant documents much more quickly and overcome obstacles like language differences in ways that would have been difficult to imagine only a few years ago. This allows me to focus on the part of my job that I love—tackling challenges and solving problems for my clients.

On a more personal level, technology continues to provide lawyers with more flexibility to get the best the profession has to offer without having to give up their lives and families. Lawyers are not chained to their desks anymore, and when I travel these days, all I need to take is an iPad. The flexibility that technology gives us is going to be critical to continuing to attract new generations of lawyers. As with most things, the pros also bring some cons. The fact that we can work from anywhere means it can be hard to escape work, which puts the onus on us to maintain boundaries. But I am excited to see what comes next and how the increased flexibility these tools allow can help us serve our clients while maintaining a livable work-life balance.

What is the greatest challenge you see for the legal profession?

Maintaining civility and professionalism. In the government investigations and enforcement world, the stakes keep going up. There are public demands for more criminal prosecutions and harsher punishments for companies and individuals. That pressure on the criminal side is matched by enforcement authorities and private plaintiffs seeking to recover massive amounts on the civil side in cases of alleged wrongdoing. There is a temptation in that environment to throw civility and professionalism out the window and to become more aggressive and more unreasonable in representing clients who feel like they are under attack. There is a different way. I have seen my clients get better results when I forcefully defend our positions while establishing a relationship of trust with adversaries by remaining civil and professional.