K&L Gates Adds Five-Lawyer Energy Team in Texas

Fort Worth, Dallas, and Houston - Global law firm K&L Gates LLP has added a team of four energy partners and one energy counsel in its Fort Worth, Dallas, and Houston offices. The team comes to K&L Gates from Winstead PC, where one of the partners, Jeff King, served as chair of the energy law practice group.

Prior to moving to Winstead in 2011, King and three others — partners Jamie Bryan and Chris Brown and counsel Mitchell Murphy — all spent their careers with K&L Gates and its legacy Texas firm Hughes & Luce LLP. They are joined in their return to K&L Gates by partner Elizabeth Tiblets. Together, the group’s capabilities span a diverse range of energy litigation and transactional matters across the oil and gas, petrochemical, renewable energy, and power sectors.

King, Bryan, and Tiblets join K&L Gates’ Fort Worth office, Brown joins in Dallas, and Murphy joins in Houston. Given their statewide and national energy practices and client bases, King, Bryan, Tiblets, and Brown will be co-assigned to the firm’s Houston office to better serve clients headquartered there.

Jeff King is an oil and gas trial lawyer. He represents oil and gas producers and marketing companies in MDLs, class actions, and individual cases before state courts, federal courts, and arbitration panels throughout the western United States, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Ohio. This includes royalty, environmental, drilling, offshore, hydraulic fracturing, surface, municipal, lease termination, failure to develop, drainage, and title disputes. King is also a noted author and speaker on many oil and gas issues.

Jamie Bryan concentrates her practice on the oil and gas industry in both the upstream and midstream sector and complex multi-district litigation. For the past 18 years, she has focused on a broad range of energy issues including royalty disputes, lease termination issues, surface use issues, municipal ordinances, environmental claims, right to take challenges, and eminent domain. Bryan also counsels clients on policy issues, best practices, and litigation avoidance.

An energy, financial services, and commercial litigator, Chris Brown represents oil and gas producer and marketing clients in multi-state litigation and appellate matters including class action and individual royalty litigation throughout the U.S., lease termination, surface damages, indemnity, and operating and marketing disputes, in addition to advising on best practices and compliance issues. He also represents commercial and energy clients in disputes involving municipalities, government contracts, real property title, complex financing, fraud, and breaches of fiduciary duty.

Elizabeth Tiblets is a trial and appellate litigator who represents international and regional energy clients in class actions, MDLs, and individual cases. She has vast experience in a variety of oil and gas disputes, including royalty, development, operating, acquisition, and title disputes.  

Mitch Murphy focuses his practice on energy litigation and negotiating master services agreements.

Jim Segerdahl, K&L Gates’ Global Managing Partner, commented: “Texas is a crucially important and strategic market to our clients and our firm, especially with respect to the multi-faceted energy industry. The addition of this talented and experienced group, many of whom are rejoining K&L Gates, is a major boost to our already strong capacity in this area. We are delighted to have this formidable group as part of our team and available to clients with needs in Texas and throughout the U.S.”

“We are excited to add these five high-caliber energy litigation and transaction lawyers to our Texas offices,” said Randel Young, a global leader for the firm’s energy, infrastructure and resources practice area. “This team’s return to K&L Gates significantly strengthens our growing Texas and U.S. oil, gas, and energy disputes practice with a wealth of experience in handling litigation, arbitration, and transactional matters for clients in the upstream, midstream, and downstream and related service sectors of the U.S. onshore and offshore oil and gas industry. They have experience in virtually all the major oil and gas basins in the U.S. and add an exciting and impressive roster of clients to our national oil and gas practice. We look forward to them building their practices and integrating into the firm’s platform.”

K&L Gates’ globally integrated oil and gas practice is built on a deep, practical understanding of the oil and gas business and the interplay between the legal, commercial, and technical aspects of exploring for, producing, gathering, transporting, storing, marketing, and processing crude oil, natural gas, liquefied natural gas, natural gas liquids, and other petroleum products. The firm represents participants in the upstream, midstream, and downstream segments of the oil and gas industry, and in the various related manufacturing, service, and supply sectors.

The arrival of the lawyers is part of an expansion strategy that has seen the addition of a number of new lawyers to the firm’s energy, infrastructure and resources practice over the past year, including London-based global disputes and transaction partners Jeremy Farr, Charles Lockwood, and Clare Kempkens; Houston-based global LNG partner Daniel LeFort; Fort Worth and Houston midstream/pipeline litigation and condemnation partners Joseph Regan and Adam Plumbley; Houston oil and gas of counsel Zachary Ferreira; New York and Houston partner Toshi Yoshida; and Washington, D.C., partnerElias Hinckley and counsel James Wrathall.