McGinnis Lochridge

McGinnis Lochridge

McGinnis Lochridge was formed in 1927 when James E. 'Jed' Lochridge joined a predecessor practice in Austin, creating a firm that would become synonymous with Texas litigation. The firm grew alongside the state's hydrocarbon economy, representing major producers and pipeline operators in the Permian Basin, Eagle Ford, and Gulf Coast. One of its early name partners, James McGinnis, later served as a justice on the Texas Supreme Court, embedding the firm's appellate DNA from the start. The firm's practice is anchored in complex commercial litigation, with heavy sector concentration in energy, real estate, construction, and water law. Its energy group handles royalty disputes, lease interpretation, surface-use conflicts, and environmental enforcement actions. The real estate practice manages land-use litigation, eminent domain proceedings, and title disputes for large agricultural and ranching family-office clients. Additional specialty groups operate in financial services litigation, employment law, and probate. The firm regularly advises family offices on intergenerational wealth transfer litigation and fiduciary disputes. McGinnis Lochridge counts approximately 60 attorneys across four Texas offices — Austin, Houston, Dallas, and Decatur. The Decatur office reflects the firm's enduring ties to North Texas mineral-rights holders and ranching families, a less common geographic footprint among Texas big-law firms. The firm does not operate as a corporate-transactional giant but as a pure litigation and dispute-resolution shop, with a reputation overshadowed in head count by firms like Vinson & Elkins or Baker Botts but frequently brought in as local counsel or special litigation counsel by those same firms when jury trials are imminent. In October 2023 the firm announced the opening of its Dallas office with the addition of a four-partner litigation team from Shackelford, Bowen, McKinley & Norton, signaling a push into the North Texas insurance-defense and transportation markets (per the firm's press release, October 2023). The structural distinction at McGinnis Lochridge is its century-long tolerance for a low-leverage, trial-forward model that other Texas firms long ago abandoned for transactional scale. The firm maintains a partner-heavy ratio and rarely deploys the large-associate-army structure of national litigation shops. This makes it a boutique-like alternative for family offices and closely held businesses that face bet-the-company litigation but do not want their matter handed to a second-year associate. The firm's appellate group and the judicial lineage from its name partner provide a credible threat of appeal that shapes settlement negotiations from the first filing.