Five years ago, rather than traveling to El Paso, many lawyers would refer litigation work to local counsel in El Paso. But since the global financial crisis of 2008 and the resulting recession, more and more lawyers are taking the time and trouble to follow the money to far west Texas.
“We see more out-of-town firms coming in to do litigation, they will follow the litigation here,” said Mike McQueen, managing partner of Kemp Smith, the largest firm in El Paso. “For a long time we were in kind of a bubble out here and neither lawyers or clients in other major cities particularly wanted to come out here,” McQueen said. “But you know, we have situations now where we’ll see a national firm will be monitoring litigation activity in El Paso. They will see a law suit from one of their clients and will say ‘we have an office in Dallas and can handle that for you.’ What the clients don’t know is that they [the Dallas lawyers] are 600 miles away.”
