Halliburton Hires Baker Botts Litigation Chair as New GC
Van Beckwith is going in-house with Halliburton, a Baker Botts client, after 30 years with the firm. Partners Bridget Moore and Danny David will become the new litigation department heads.
December 18, 2019 at 03:53 PM
4 minute read
Baker Botts. (Photo: Jason Doiy/ALM)
Van Beckwith, chair of Baker Botts' litigation department, will depart after 30 years to become senior vice president and general counsel at Halliburton Co. on Jan. 1.
Beckwith's move is reminiscent of others in the industry who, after long careers at Big Law firms, have gone in-house with a major client of their firm.
Baker Botts partners Bridget Moore in Washington, D.C., and Danny David in Houston will succeed him as heads of the litigation department.
Beckwith said he will work closely with current Halliburton GC and former Baker Botts partner Robb Voyles, who will become Halliburton's chief legal officer Jan. 1. Voyles, currently executive vice president, secretary and GC at Halliburton, is 63, and the oilfield services company has a mandatory retirement age of 65. He said he will stay on for at least a year during the transition.
"This is part of our ongoing succession planning efforts to bring [Beckwith] in and he will work under me until I retire, and then likely be elevated to my position," Voyles said.
Voyles, who said he hired Beckwith as an associate at Baker Botts, said his former law partner has established a good relationship with Halliburton CEO Jeff Miller, and brings management chops from his role heading Baker Botts' litigation department.
"Our CEO kind of favors somebody with a litigation background like mine … because litigators tend to have experience with all areas of the law. Van's got IP experience, commercial experience [and] experience with compliance issues," Voyles said.
Beckwith, 54, said Halliburton started conversations with him several months ago about coming in-house. With the job change, Beckwith said he and his wife will move to Houston from Dallas.
The litigator said that while Halliburton is a longtime Baker Botts client, he has not done a whole lot of work for it over the years. His clients include AT&T, Keurig Dr Pepper and Hunt Oil Co. He also helped lead a team that in 2015 won dismissal of a $1.37 billion trade secrets suit brought by Texas oil company Moncrief Oil International against Beckwith's client OAO Gazprom, a Russian natural gas company.
The veteran Baker Botts trial lawyer said he will leave the 260-lawyer litigation department in good hands with Moore and David as co-chairs, because they are "exceptional lawyers."
He is proud of the litigation department's recent lateral hires, and that it won Litigation Department of the Year for Texas at the 2019 American Lawyer Industry Awards.
According to David, 16 of the 24 lateral partner hires at Baker Botts in 2019 were litigators.
David, a securities litigator, said one of his goals is to deepen Baker Botts' relationships with clients, so it is always the "go-to firm" for complicated disputes.
Moore, a former U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission enforcement lawyer who focuses on civil litigation and white-collar matters, has been Beckwith's deputy for the last two years. She said she hopes to build on his leadership in areas such as promoting diversity, and in improving the client experience through technology innovations and other means.
Another goal for the department, she said, is helping litigation associates gain more "ownership" of the firm's business early in their careers.
"We are making sure we are putting the right teams together [and] the associates get proper training," she said.
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