HOUSTON, Feb. 22 2005 – LAWFUEL – The Law News Network– When leading international law firm King & Spalding LLP agreed to open a three-lawyer outpost in Houston to handle work for longtime client Texaco in 1995, little did the firm imagine that from that one client and three lawyers, its Houston office would in just 10 years mature into one of the city’s largest non-Texas-based law firms. King & Spalding’s
Houston office now employs nearly 200 people, including 70 lawyers serving
clients in the top echelon of Houston’s business elite like ChevronTexaco
Corp., the Houston Astros, Dow Chemical and Shell Oil Company, as well as
major corporations around the world. The firm today will mark its 10th
anniversary in Houston with a celebration for clients, staff and local
dignitaries.
“It is very gratifying to be celebrating ten successful years in Houston,”
says Randy Coley, Managing Partner of King & Spalding’s Houston office.
“Houston is a wonderful place to practice law and be part of the community,
and we have very much made it our home. By working closely with our clients to
understand their business goals as well as their legal goals, we have grown as
our clients have grown.”
King & Spalding’s Houston office has kept with the firm’s longstanding
tradition of giving back to the communities where its people live and work.
Since 2001, the Houston team has donated more than 7,000 pro bono hours
working with local organizations such as the Houston Volunteer Lawyers Program
and Texas C-Bar.
King & Spalding’s Houston office was opened in 1995 at the request of
Texaco, which had hired the firm to handle its challenging oil royalties
litigation. When Chevron merged with Texaco, King & Spalding maintained the
strong relationship, which has sustained itself through three General
Counsels. The firm’s ChevronTexaco team, under the leadership of Houston
partner Bobby Meadows, has grown to become one of ChevronTexaco’s top two
providers of outside legal counsel.
The success of this relationship with ChevronTexaco and with the Houston
office’s other key clients stems from the ability of the Houston litigation
team, led by Reggie Smith, to successfully handle high-stakes litigation and
the skill of its transactional teams in providing industry-leading expertise
in such areas as the development of liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects.
The office’s energy practice, led by Philip Weems, is a world leader in
the development and permitting of liquefied natural gas terminals, and in the
past 12 months, it has provided counsel on LNG import, export and transport
projects in 12 countries around the world. These projects include several on
the U.S. Gulf Coast — including the Freeport LNG Terminal in Freeport, Texas,
and the Sabine Pass LNG Terminal in Cameron Parish, La. — and projects in
Angola, Indonesia, Korea, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. In addition, the firm’s
Houston-based Latin American Practice deals daily with complex international
transactions and trade issues on behalf of both Latin American and North
American companies.
In addition to housing its world-known energy team, King & Spalding’s
Houston office has served as the beachhead for the development of its highly
regarded International Arbitration practice. The King & Spalding team, led by
Houstonian Doak Bishop, represents a worldwide base of clients before a wide
array of arbitration bodies and tribunals in locations as far flung as the
Middle East, Asia and Latin America.
About King & Spalding LLP
King & Spalding LLP is an international law firm with more than 800
lawyers in Atlanta, Houston, London, New York and Washington, D.C. The firm
represents more than half of the Fortune 100, and in a Corporate Counsel
survey in October 2004 was ranked one of the top ten firms representing
Fortune 250 companies overall. For additional information, visit
http://www.kslaw.com.
Web Site: http://www.kslaw.com
