FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS
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The Firm is general counsel to several financial institutions. Our representation includes banks, bank holding companies, related non-bank subsidiaries, credit unions and credit card companies. In addition to daily representation and counseling to the lending and trust departments, we are regularly involved in more complex and specialized areas, such as officer and director liability, lender liability, mergers and acquisitions, environmental issues, banking regulation compliance, work out agreements, collections and employee benefits. We also represent individual customers in their dealings with financial institutions and governmental agencies such as the SBA and FmHA.

AGRICULTURE AND WATER LAW
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Our attorneys provide a wide range of legal services to agricultural producers and processors. We have experience in varied practice areas, including litigation, regulatory, business transactions, real estate, environmental, labor and employment, tax, and oil and gas. Our work in agriculture includes representation of a broad variety of clients, from national concerns to individual farmers, dairymen, and ranchers. In addition, the Firm is quite active in its representation of trade organizations and associations relating to cotton, milk, and other commodities.

The Firm is also involved in all aspects of water law. This includes representation of water districts and handling litigation involving water rights disputes for water districts, property owners, and others who have a vested interest in this vital property right.

COOPERATIVE LAW
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One of the Firm’s major areas of concentration is its representation of cooperative clients. Attorneys in the Firm have achieved statewide and national recognition for their special experience representing cotton gins, compresses, regional oil mills, marketing associations, and several agri-business cooperatives. The Firm’s representation includes the initial organization of new entities through all facets of business operations to regulatory litigation before statewide agencies, trial courts, and the state’s highest court.

LITIGATION
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The Firm enjoys a substantial civil litigation practice. Our attorneys practice before state and federal courts; local, state, and federal governmental bodies and administrative agencies; arbitration panels; and routinely handle mediations and other alternative dispute resolution mechanisms for our clients. Our litigators both prosecute and defend claims in a broad range of commercial and tort actions.

Attorneys from the Firm regularly litigate commercial and business disputes in such areas as corporate law, property damage, oil and gas law, corporate transactions, employment discrimination, banking and financial transactions, utility regulation, contract disputes, and other commercial matters. As to tort based litigation, our attorneys handle personal injury, product liability, professional malpractice, railroad, all aspects of insurance-based litigation, libel and slander, and other business tort litigation.

PUBLIC SCHOOL LAW
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The Firm acts as legal counsel to public school districts, both large and small, throughout the West Texas area in matters ranging from daily advice on policies and business matters to litigation and appellate work on civil rights and other complex cases. Our lawyers have extensive experience handling hearings before school boards and in defending desegregation, voting rights, employment, students’ rights, and First Amendment lawsuits for our school district clients.

BUSINESS ENTITIES
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The Firm has represented many of its core business clients for a number of years. This continuity brings stability and expertise to clients’ business needs. Serving as clients’ general counsel makes up a significant portion of the Firm’s business.

Our attorneys are active in advising the Firm’s clients on the formation of new business entities. This includes the formation of corporations, limited and general partnerships, limited liability companies, limited liability partnerships, and joint ventures. Our attorneys will develop a plan of action for the new entity and work with that entity on an ongoing basis with its business strategies and needs.

We also advise our clients on the duties and responsibilities of directors and officers in relation to their fiduciary duties to the entity, as well as drafting and implementing policies and procedures for the new entity.

COMMERCIAL
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The Firm offers a full range of legal services to clients involved in commercial transactions, oil and gas, and real estate. In addition to assisting our clients with their complex commercial transactions, we are able to provide more specialized services such as securing equity based working capital and private placements. The Firm has substantial experience in structuring and developing projects and developments such as commercial and residential developments, hotels, golf courses, dairies, oil and gas ventures, hospitals, surgery centers and numerous other projects.

HEALTH CARE
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The Firm’s attorneys represent a broad spectrum of health care providers, including hospitals, physicians and physician organizations, long term health care providers, joint venture entities, surgery centers, clinics, and medical foundations.

Our attorneys have extensive expertise in representation of health care clients and the unique legal issues they confront, including their start up, day to day activities, and the handling of all forms of litigation related to the entities and groups. Our attorneys further serve as general counsel for many of our health care clients.

PROBATE AND ESTATES
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The Firm provides a variety of services for our clients in the fields of estate planning and probate. In the estate planning practice, attorneys plan for transfers of personal wealth during life and after death, and provide legal advice about income, estate, gift, and inheritance taxes. In addition to preparing wills and trusts, we also provide legal advice regarding estate planning through the use of inter vivos gifts, insurance planning, various “estate freezing” techniques, and charitable gift planning. The Firm provides representation to trust departments as well as to executors in probating wills, and provides a broad array of legal services relating to transactions arising during estate administrations.

FAMILY LAW
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Family law blends its own unique features with litigation, property law, commercial law, taxation, and other specialty areas. Attorneys in the Firm effectively represent clients in this specialty which requires the exercise of legal skills in the context of the cultural and psychological factors that are often present.

LABOR AND EMPLOYMENT
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This practice area encompasses the implementation and development of employment policies and procedures as well as representing both employees and employers in employment disputes. Our representation of clients in employment disputes has been in areas including discrimination and harassment claims, retaliatory compensation and wage claims, in addition to claims involving covenants not to compete. Our attorneys further handle EEOC and TCHR claims and Department of Labor investigations.

REAL ESTATE
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The Firm handles commercial, residential, and farm and ranch real estate related matters from a simple lease or foreclosure to major real estate acquisitions, development, condemnation, loans, financing and other complex real estate matters. Attorneys in the firm also handle all aspects of title work and other related matters for our clients.

OIL AND GAS
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For our oil and gas clients, we offer an extensive working knowledge of the industry and its related problems from those involving the mineral owners, surface owners, and investors to the more difficult legal problems of the operator, such as gas contracts, gas balancing agreements, unitization agreements, and environmental and other regulatory problems. The Firm is active in both oil and gas transactions and litigation.

PUBLIC UTILITIES
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A major area of the Firm’s history has involved extensive representation of telecommunication and electric utility companies in both state and federal forums. This includes representation of private, public and cooperative based companies. With technological advancements spurring new competitive private utilities into the marketplace, the Firm has expanded its resources to address the changing specialized needs of both its long term public utility clients and new private entrants to the marketplace, including international utility companies.

The Firm also represents select consumers of utility services in appropriate regulatory, transactional, and litigation contexts.

BANKRUPTCY
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The firm represents debtors and trustees in bankruptcy cases under Chapters 7, 11, 12 and 13 of the United States Bankruptcy Code. We have extensive experience in handling complex Chapter 11 cases. We also take pride in offering personal and professional representation for individuals who need to file bankruptcy.

Attorneys with the Firm also represent financial institutions, creditors and other parties in interest who have claims against bankruptcy estates.

We also represent receiverships and can serve as receivers.

TAX
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The area of taxation is ever expanding and involves all aspects of federal, state and local taxation. Our tax attorneys work closely with other attorneys throughout the Firm to provide tax advice applicable to clients in business, personal, and estate tax planning. The Firm emphasizes planning and structuring transactions to maximize tax advantages. Representation can involve contesting tax liabilities in administrative hearings and federal and state courts. The Firm advises clients on corporate and other business entity formations and reorganizations, liquidations, and executive and employee compensation and benefits. The Firm handles all aspects of business transactions, including negotiations, drafting agreements, and consummating transactions. The Firm also provides legal services to tax-exempt organizations.

PUBLIC LAW
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While we are not lobbyists on a regular basis, the Firm has represented clients before the Texas Legislature, state and federal agencies, and county and municipal governmental units. Our work runs the gamut from counseling of clients on the governmental processes and procedures to drafting of proposed legislation. We are familiar with the procedural and political pitfalls in a variety of public law situations, and recognized drafting specialists.

APPELLATE
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The Firm’s experience includes appellate work in the Courts of Appeal and Supreme Courts of Texas and the United States. Its attorneys have made appearances before Texas Courts of Appeal, the Texas Supreme Court, federal appellate courts, and the United States Supreme Court.

MEDIA LAW
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The Firm offers both its print and broadcast media clients a full range of legal services. We advise them concerning legal problems with libel and slander, invasion of privacy, the Open Meetings Act, the Open Records Act, and the Federal Freedom of Information Act. We represent these clients in business matters, in prepublication review of articles and stories, and in post-publication and post-broadcast disputes.

GENERAL PRACTICE
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While some attorneys in the Firm limit their practices to specialized areas, several others are available to handle the general office practice for the benefit of individual, corporate, and institutional clients who have less specialized, yet no less important, legal matters to be resolved. The Firm strives to serve all of the legal needs of the clients, and has a 75 year history of doing so.