Inadmissible

To grow its energy practice, Latham & Watkins opened its first Texas office on Jan. 7 staffed with two partners who left Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld ‘s Houston office and one who joined Latham from Houston’s Baker Botts . The partners are Michael Dillard and Michael Chambers , from Akin Gump, and Sean Wheeler from Baker Botts, says Frank Pizzurro, senior public relations manager for Latham & Watkins in Los Angeles. Pizzurro says Latham expects to add more lawyers in Houston this year, including some current Latham lawyers who will transfer to Houston, but he declines to give an estimate of how many. Pizzurro says the Houston office — the firm’s 29th — is a “key part of our firm’s strategy to develop a leading international energy practice.” Pizzurro declines to identify any clients that may have prompted the 2,000-lawyer firm to open its first Texas office. Dillard and Wheeler each did not return a telephone call seeking comment before presstime on Jan. 14. Chambers says he joined Latham because of its “deep bench” of lawyers and its global reach. He declines to identify his clients but says they include a number of major New York-based investment banks the firm already represents, and a number of private equity companies that are new clients for Latham. Other lawyers are forming new firms in Texas or jumping to new firms. For example, Dallas lawyers Roger Mandel and Blake Beckham have formed Beckham & Mandel to do business trial and plaintiffs class action litigation. Mandel comes from Stanley, Mandel & Iola , while Beckham was at The Beckham Group . The new firm has six lawyers, according to its Web site. Also in Dallas, The Law Offices of Stephen A. Kennedy added two new name shareholders — Steven Clark and Steven Williams — and launched Kennedy, Clark & Williams . Zac Duffy , Renee Summers and Thomas Gallagher are new associates at Kennedy, Clark, which does intellectual property law, commercial law, business litigation and employment law. Clark, Duffy and Gallagher came from Clark & Milby ; Williams was at Slater & Matsil ; and Summers was of counsel at Kennedy Law . In Houston, a patent prosecution team led by Carey Jordan joined McDermott Will & Emery ‘s Houston office. The group, which came from Baker Botts, also includes partner Iona Kaiser and associates Andrew Metrailer and Melody Wirz . Elsewhere, K&L Gates added J. David Bickham Jr. as a commercial litigation partner in its Austin office, and C. Scott Gladden as an of counsel attorney in Fort Worth. Bickham left Vinson & Elkins , while Gladden, an energy transactional lawyer, had been vice president and general counsel at Merit Energy Co. of Dallas.

Happy Anniversary

On Jan. 13, 1840, then-Chief Justice Thomas Jefferson Rusk called the first session of the Supreme Court of the Republic of Texas. A ceremony celebrating the Supreme Court’s 170th anniversary was held on Jan. 13 in the high court’s courtroom. Former Chief Justice Tom Phillips , an ardent history buff, says the Supreme Court had been around for four years before it ever put out an opinion. Phillips, who served as chief justice from 1988 to 2004 and is now a partner in Baker Botts in Austin, says Texas voters created the Supreme Court when they approved the constitution of the Republic of Texas on Sept. 5, 1836. Phillips says Rusk was the court’s third chief justice. The other two left office before the court held its first session. When Rusk opened the first session, the court included the chief justice and five district court justices then sitting in courts across the Texas republic. “We did not have separate Supreme Court justices until Texas became a state,” Phillips says. For those who don’t remember state history, Texas became a state in 1845. James Paulsen , a South Texas College of Law professor who has researched the Texas Supreme Court’s history and written about it, says the first case in which the court issued a formal written opinion was Republic of Texas v. McCulloch, et al. , in which the court held it had no jurisdiction. Paulsen says the first case the Supreme Court considered and decided was Ex Parte Robinson , which involved an indictment against James W. Robinson , who was then on the Supreme Court. According to Paulsen, Robinson was indicted for murder and other offenses, but the Supreme Court dismissed the indictment. Robinson resigned from the court the same day the indictment was dismissed, Paulsen says. Phillips is one of the former state Supreme Court chief justices who attended the Jan. 13 ceremony. Osler McCarthy , the Supreme Court spokesman, says Jack Pope , who served as chief justice from 1982 to 1985, also attended. The Texas Supreme Court Historical Society sponsored the ceremony, which also marked the society’s 20th anniversary.

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