Austin

Our presence in Texas spans more than 40 years with offices in Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth, and Houston.

Collectively, our Texas lawyers provide comprehensive legal services to public and private businesses across all industry sectors on national and international matters, in addition to those involving Texas-specific law. From lobbying and legislative counseling (including media relations and community outreach), to oil and gas litigation, to private funds, to cross-border transactions, to Texas state and local taxes, our team collaborates across our fully integrated offices within Texas and around the world to handle our clients’ most complex legal issues.

Founded in 1979, our Austin office has strong, long-standing ties to the state capitol. It is home to our dynamic Texas Public Policy and Law group, which handles lobbying, legislative counseling, and other legislative matters for a multitude of clients. Its other key practices include Commercial Disputes; Intellectual Property Litigation; Financial Institutions and Services Litigation; Environmental, Land, and Natural Resources; and Immigration.

The Austin office is the center of the firm’s internationally recognized practice in US immigration law. The Immigration team focuses on the needs of its clients, including global businesses, entrepreneurs, investors, and cutting-edge technology and emerging growth companies. They serve clients throughout the United States with work visas, green cards, and citizenship applications, as well as immigration compliance and resolution of complex immigration matters at the agency, court, and policy levels. The team works in tandem with lawyers in Labor, Employment, and Workplace Safety; Corporate; Corporate Tax; Estate Planning and Trusts & Estates; Litigation and Dispute Resolution; and other areas as appropriate to develop high-quality immigration solutions for our clients.

Our Austin-based Environment, Land, and Natural Resources practitioners have decades of experience advising clients on regulatory compliance and rulemaking, strategic permitting, litigation, legislative matters, corporate crises, civil enforcement, water rights, and business transactions. Our lawyers help clients to resolve all manner of issues, from investigations to contaminated site remediation, under every major environmental statute and regulatory program. The environmental group also has strong relationships with federal and state regulatory authorities including the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), US Fish and Wildlife Service, Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), Texas Railroad Commission, Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT), and Texas Health and Human Services Commission.

Austin’s Corporate practice focuses primarily on private investment funds, with an emphasis on private equity and real estate fund formation. Our group advises clients in connection with a wide variety of private investment vehicles, ranging from syndicated single-asset partnerships to multi-billion dollar funds, and has experience structuring investment vehicles for a broad range of domestic and international investors. Our experience also includes advising clients on securities and other regulatory matters.

Our Austin office's Litigation and Dispute Resolution group represents local, regional, national, and multinational clients in a wide variety of complex commercial, immigration, and intellectual property litigation matters before state and federal trial and appellate courts. Its lawyers have extensive experience with business disputes; product liability; patent, trademark, and copyright infringements; corporate and investment-based immigration matters; director and officer liability; shareholder and securities issues; employment matters; construction matters; and government and self-regulatory organization investigations.

Intellectual Property (IP) also encompasses a significant portion of the work in the Austin office. We represent clients on all manner of IP litigation and transactions; provide IP acquisition and portfolio management services; and provide counseling relating to patents, trademarks, copyrights, unfair competition, trade secrets, and domain name rights, as well as substantial trademark prosecution and TTAB proceedings. This includes the litigation and resolution of contentious and complex patent and trademark disputes, as well as such related areas as discovery, motion practice, injunctions, and appeals, on behalf of both IP right owners and accused infringers in federal courts and before the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). The team advises clients in the software, electronics, life sciences, and other high technology and manufacturing industries on technologies that range from semiconductors to oilfield equipment, pharmaceuticals and biotechnology, medical devices, and automotive and defense technologies.