She’s invalidated trademarks, won hundreds of millions for clients, and has been called “the best damn lawyer in Houston.” She epitomizes the firm’s philosophy of allowing each lawyer to calibrate her own risk as a trial lawyer, while at the same time overseeing recruiting, including the 13 lucky lawyers who joined this year. And the Susman Godfrey team cheered like it had won another billion dollars.
Lee Godfrey joined the firm in 1983, and continued as a co-managing partner until his retirement in 2014.
It was a novel idea; at the time, the use of contingency fees was limited largely to personal injury cases. You need to understand a brotherhood that includes sisters and how loyalty and fun can create more profitability than any fancy-ass, hourly-billing law firm consultant could ever conjure. 2020. To win to help your client. Joining Susman Godfrey meant she was making $10,000 less than her other options.
The firm effectively started in 1976 when Steve Susman created a plaintiffs’ commercial litigation practice at a small Houston maritime firm.
Manne was flattered but told Susman no. Photo by Felix Sanchez. Tell us about your top U.S. Supreme Court or federal appeals court victory over the past year and how you and your team achieved the win. His partners elected him a managing partner in 2011 and have re-elected him ever since. Winning Susman Godfrey style is bigger, badder, and more fun than at any other firm.
She quietly rose to examine the county’s expert witness who supported the practice. Do not act upon information found on Lawdragon as a replacement for legal advice provided by a professional attorney in good standing and licensed to practice in your jurisdiction.
To win because it’s so fun to celebrate. “She had noticed and she didn’t say but you could tell she was disappointed. Since then, owing to its people, the New York office has found nothing but success, says Carmody.
Find the right contact. Everything that we do is designed to prepare our attorneys to persuade a jury. More than 80 percent of the firm’s revenues now derive from contingent, monthly-fixed or hybrid fees, with less than 20 percent coming from traditional hourly fees. The firm’s attorneys would come by at all hours as Raymond spent his evenings with Louis, writing a string of email updates to the firm during his endless hours at the hospital. His first big contingency win was for Lyondell, where he won a $22M award at age 37. Rather than joining the big Texas firms, Lee Godfrey, Parker Folse, Mark Wawro, and a rustle of other smart graduates of, primarily, the University of Texas School of Law, bought into the Susman vision in the early days. He is, instead, a very real little boy who had a very, very rough first 82 days of life. Our interests are aligned with our clients-we want to achieve the best-possible outcome at the lowest possible cost. To counter the structural bloat of our opponents, who often have three associates for each partner, we rely on creativity and efficiency. For more than a decade he has been one of Wal-Mart’s go-to litigators, having tried major cases for it across the country and in Puerto Rico. In 1988, Manne said yes, joining Folse, his best friend from law school, in Houston. Although he and Wachtell typically represented defendants, he had a rare chance to work as plaintiff’s counsel for Philip Morris when it sued ABC for reporting it had spiked its cigarettes with nicotine. Each partner can determine her or his portfolio of risk, Financial, Equitas, Lyondell, and Kellogg Brown Root, while winning over $1B in verdicts and settlements for clients including Lyondell and Masimo. Dad is partner Shawn Raymond, who learned firsthand what the legal system looked like growing up. Photo by Jeffrey Luke. The bar is incredibly high, since the firm is deciding whether to invest its contingent time, and often its out-of-pocket cash. Some of them are first-class runners. His strategy involved finding some good store-level witnesses from Northern Minnesota.
Despite the high stakes, the decisions are one person one vote; an associate who has been at the firm two weeks gets the same vote on these decisions as Susman or Manne – and is expected to take the responsibility seriously. In 2000, Manne persuaded Raymond to join the firm. But sometimes opportunities present themselves. Designed by Elfatrany.
We structured everything about the firm based on winning for clients.”.
White grew up in courtrooms in Baton Rouge. In the late 1980s the firm opened a Dallas office in order to continue practicing with Terry Oxford, Barry Barnett and eventually Ophelia Camina—all of whom remained with the firm after it merged the Dallas office into its Houston office more than 25 years later.
Today, Susman Godfrey continues to be the leader among law firm using alternative fees of one sort or another. Susman Godfrey reaped the benefits of this high-risk/high-return model by carefully selecting its cases and winning some of the largest jury verdicts in the country while efficiently working and trying the cases.
And it shows in every line of the words Raymond wrote to the firm as he visited the critically ill Louis over his first 82 days of life. “Usually, people have plenty of notice.
Attorney Advertising. Louis suffered an array of life-threatening illnesses, most pointedly a chronic inability to breathe on his own. Which brings us to King Louis. On May 8, 2014, Raymond gave the toughest closing argument of his life. He won $550 million and understood that his success should come from his results rather than his effort. When Bhatia decided to move to Susman in 1995, his work for Philip Morris was an issue. The firm opened in Los Angeles in 1998 under class-action powerhouse Marc Seltzer, and in 2006, the firm opened in New York, where it has flourished under Bill Carmody and collected Supreme Court clerks as if it were a hobby. He has won hundreds of millions of dollars in verdicts and settlements, netting $50M for Apache Deepwater in an offshore well-abandonment case in the Gulf in 2015. Los Angeles partner Kalpana Srinivasan.
It’s celebrated in grand style in far-flung places by entire trial teams after a trial victory or big settlement. For the Susman Godfrey of 2017, the answer is a resounding yes from a firm well stocked with big rainmakers in four nationwide offices who handle a diversified mix of cases for plaintiffs and defendants, most of it on various non-hourly arrangements. Of the 24 lawyers in the New York office, six have clerked for the Supreme Court, and a seventh is on his way to clerk for Justice Elena Kagan.
If you want to work for a company that will take care of you as a person and not treat you like a robot sitting at a desk then you will enjoy this firm!
Susman Godfrey, in whole, is a wonderful company to work for. Would you do me a favor and just take a half an hour? Susman Godfrey, America’s premier litigation boutique, was founded on a simple vision: Hire only the best; get paid for success; and handle every case with a relentless focus on winning at trial. We approach each case as if it is headed for trial.
There’s a sturdy Chevy truck in that recipe: federal clerkship, Texas and bet on yourself, even if there are today Rauschenbergs hanging on the wall. Neal is a fairly persuasive lawyer, of course, but absolutely no one can resist Nancy. “I felt our firm would have a real competitive advantage because, while very smart and knowledgeable about the technology, many patent lawyers at the time did not have our level of experience in front of juries and judges.”.