Dallas Litigation Boutique Nearly Triples, Luring Big Law Expats

As Big Law continues its stampede into Texas, a few of its former denizens are taking a different route to a new litigation boutique in oil country.

Vartabedian, Hester & Haynes’ plan to zero in on oil and gas, bankruptcy, and corporate litigation, as well as a new white collar and investigations practice, has helped the firm convince Big Law lawyers to make the jump, said co-founder and name partner Rob Vartabedian.

“We’re refugees from big firms,” said Richard Roper, a former US Attorney for the Northern District of Texas who recently left Holland & Knight to lead the boutique’s new white collar team.

Rob Vartebedian

VHH

Its latest addition, announced Monday, is Richard Guiltinan, who will help Roper build the white collar practice. Guiltinan, trial lawyer with a health-care focus, is leaving his post as Assistant US Attorney in Dallas after eight years.

Guiltinan worked at Haynes Boone, one of the state’s largest homegrown firms, earlier in his career. He said he considered heading back to Big Law, “but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to join a growing firm on the ground floor.”

The Dallas boutique, started last year as a 12-person team with litigation partners who splintered from Holland & Knight and Alston & Bird. It has nearly tripled to 31 lawyers, adding an office in nearby Fort Worth.

VHH has put money into attracting and retaining junior lawyers. It matches the Big Law year-end bonus scale, recently set by Milbank LLP, and this year rolled out additional $5,000 summer bonuses.

Texas boutiques are popular destinations for local general counsels, said Ricky Torlincasi, who is in that role for Fort Worth’s Blackbeard Operating, a large privately held energy producer.

Torlincasi said his breaking point came in the form of a bill from a large firm’s managing partner for review and revision of a motion to quash a subpoena. He said he realized the firm was charging thousands of dollars and yet didn’t have trial experience.

“I just pulled the plug,” he said, “and I currently use only boutiques” for litigation work, including VHH.

Vartabedian has represented Blackbeard in litigation for several years.

Other boutiques are “made up almost entirely of generalists—it’s a trial gun who tries a lot of cases and gets their arms around the subject matter as quickly as they can and they go handle your big hearing or big trial,” Vartabedian said. “We’re not just learning a new area to get ready for trial; we’ve got decades of experience.”

VHH has taken cases for four of the most active drillers in the country. The firm currently is going up against an Exxon Mobil Corp. subsidiary in a $500 million tortious interference case.

Balancing Conflicts

The top trial boutiques are thriving in Texas, with some of the well-known litigators atop firms earning around $10 million annually, said Robert Kinney, president of Austin-based Kinney Recruiting.

The state is home to several high-end litigation firms: Reynolds Frizzell, Gibbs Bruns, Tillotson Johnson & Patton, and Lynn Pinker Hurst & Schwegmann, among others. It’s also home to powerhouse trial lawyers at larger firms like Susman Godfrey, Winston & Strawn, and Quinn Emanuel.

Those high-end pay rates are more common at large law firms. There are likely a couple dozen partners making $10 million annually in the offices of the AmLaw 30 firms in Texas, Kinney said. Even “service partners"—those with deep experience but not large books of business—can make up to $5 million at large firms with Texas outposts.

The biggest of the big have planted flags in Texas to get a piece of the oil and gas market and transactional work in Houston and other Lone Star business centers.

As large firms expand across the state, partners have to weigh conflicts “against the possibility that they’re doing work for businesses all over the world, and what they can sell to the businesses,” Kinney said. “These big law firms are such profit machines now, where if you can make your litigation practice work within those confines, it’s crazy, it’s so valuable.”

VHH’s founders saw post-pandemic business consolidation increase the conflicts in their old shops. That, coupled with higher fee expectations and hesitancy to accept alternative fee arrangements, was part of the inspiration to create the boutique.

The Texas-based general counsels still love boutiques because they often can deliver results with leaner bills, Torlincasi said.

“As a general counsel I’m finding racehorses and betting on them,” Torlincasi said. “If your life or your career is on the line, you’re going to go with the hot hand. And Rob has a disproportionate amount of good luck.”

Vartabedian says he’s 20-0 on the cases he’s brought to trial.

“I’ll lose one eventually, and that’s fine,” Vartabedian said. “But I’ll try to make them earn it.”