Mike Lynn on Running one of the Nation's Top Litigation Boutiques

Mike Lynn is a trailblazer in the truest sense: Whether he’s pathfinding on The Appalachian Trail or ascending the ranks in commercial litigation, he’s known for fearless leadership, grit and excellence.

The founding partner and Chairman of Dallas-based Lynn Pinker Hurst & Schwegmann left his beloved mentor in 1993, sensing that it was time to take his practice into his own hands.

“I thought I could do better on my own,” says Lynn. “And I did.” 

Lynn would go on to lead the firm in securing one of the largest verdicts ever seen in Dallas – a number just shy of $1B for Energy Transfer Partners. The seasoned and celebrated litigator has tried more than 120 criminal and civil jury cases to verdict and an additional 100 non-jury matters. And while the firm certainly boasts the highly specialized merits of being a boutique, it is anything but small with about 50 attorneys.

The firm’s impressive growth is something that Lynn takes pride in. It’s been an organic build, but not without intention. Lynn has a somewhat unconventional approach when it comes to seeking out new talent. He likes to “hire losers” – the people who can handle the setbacks of trying and losing cases because they love the practice.

Lawdragon: Tell us a bit about your early career and the start of your own firm.

Mike Lynn: I started the firm in 1993. Prior to that, I had been mentored by Jack Hauer at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld. Towards the end of his career, I found that the cases that we'd been working on that I thoroughly enjoyed were fewer and further in between. I love Jack and we tried huge oil cases out in East Texas. At one point, he asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up and I said I want to be just like him. He told me there was no way I could do that if I stayed, I couldn’t try enough cases. He encouraged me to go to the DA's office in Dallas.

Henry Wade had been the chief prosecutor here for 30 odd years. He was involved in the Lee Harvey Oswald case. He ran a very tough and fairly large office. Jack told me to go down and sit outside his door until he hired me. For two weeks – I got there at 8:00 in the morning and stayed until 5:00 in the afternoon. Sure enough, Mr. Wade hired me in the second week. I tried about 60 jury trials in a little over a year – small cases, nothing you would consider major.

I came back to Akin Gump after a year and was really ready to try cases. I volunteered to do all the temporary restraining order and injunction work. I got a lot of experience and enjoyed it a lot. Jack was fading, and I decided that they were not hiring the correct kinds of people to try cases. I thought I could do better on my own, and I did. I left in 1993. I was 43 years old.

LD: How did you get the firm started?

ML: All my clients, except one, moved with me. We were very fortunate to win several of the cases we tried right at the beginning. That led to more cases – we became a fixture in Dallas very quickly. We got a major case for Visa USA where they were sued for $1B and we ended up zeroing out the plaintiffs’ lawyers. That led to a variety of other cases. The first three to five years were a death march – we were working 3,000 hours a year and barely had time to live.

There were times when I’d shower at the YMCA because I'd been up all night. I would get shirts out of my desk, go back to work and would not sleep for 72 hours at a time. For about five years in the very beginning, it was pretty much like that – drinking out of the fire hydrant. One thing led to another and we started becoming more or less respectable because we were trying cases. We ended up trying more cases than all the other major firms in Dallas combined. I ended up winning over $1B, just me and my team. We also defeated over $1B in claims in juries.

The last person hired here has to be the smartest person in the firm. That's really important because it pushes everybody else up a notch.

LD: When it comes to the firm’s growth, how has that process been?

ML: It's been organic. My general view is there are a lot of people who want to be trial lawyers. Just like there are people who want to be actors. Some of them come straight out of school and expect to get the starring role. Well, they're not going to get it. You have to go pay your dues. As a trial lawyer you have to try a lot of cases – you have to work the off-Broadway circuit or the traveling musical before you get your shot at Broadway.

I was on a panel with a bunch of managing partners and they asked everybody, "What is your trade secret for hiring?" Everybody said the same thing – "We hire from these schools, and we only look for people with this grade point average." Things like that, they went on and on, it was very boring. What I said is that I try to hire losers – that shocked everybody. What I mean is that if you hire somebody who's played sports from the time they were six and learned to lose on Saturdays and still come back and play the next week because they really love the game, they're more likely to be able to survive the ups and downs of trying cases. That’s how you find people who are relentless and who are able to withstand the difficulties associated with a practice that is so binary. People who really enjoy getting on the stage and risking it all to produce a story that might be acceptable to a jury – that's what we look for.

They almost always have clerked for a federal judge or the Texas Supreme Court. They always were on law review, many of them were in the top 10 percent, but they also have this additional feature that others don't look for, which is what I've learned to call grit. I didn't know that there was such a thing until I read a book called "Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance," by Angela Duckworth. Her thesis is that grit defines successful people more than almost any other trait of success.

To this day, we start out by telling candidates all the terrible things we think they will encounter and all the weaknesses in my personality and the firm's personality. If they still want to come, then we'll consider them. That relentless spirit and the ability to lose three in a row and then come in on your fourth one to stand on your own two feet and win, is what we are trying to develop. That grit, I think, is why we've been successful. It's not your normal recruiting style.

LD: How would you describe the culture at your firm?

ML: Entrepreneurial. Oftentimes, we're out-personed by a lot. We will continue to put people into the case, but not at the same rate as our opponent simply because we often don't have as many people as they do. Also, the last person hired here has to be the smartest person in the firm. That's really important because it pushes everybody else up a notch and shows respect for the person being hired – it tells them that they're important. That's what we tell them, that it doesn't say partner or associate on their bar card. It says “lawyer” – and they need to start acting like one.

That responsibility includes learning the business of law as well as the game of law. The first 10 years are built learning the craft of law – how to tell a story and what the procedures are like. The next 10 years are learning the business of law. And the third 10 years is basically learning that law is about human beings and that you're really trying to solve problems for people.

LD: Would you say you encourage your people to participate in the direction of the firm?

ML: The cement is not yet set on the firm. We tell them they can mold it into what they want it to be. We are looking for participants. That's important. People are very much responsible for their own development. If folks remain in their comfort zone, they will always be half a lawyer. I guess my job is to push them out of the nest and see if they fly.

LD: Is there a case that stands out to you as particularly memorable?

ML: I was asked to represent a paralegal who had moved on to become vice president in charge of a real estate operation in Arlington, Texas. These men that she worked with needed her to keep things organized. She basically was acting as chief operating officer. She used her paralegal experience and organizational skills to document everything and make sure that these guys knew what they were doing because they were sloppy in a lot of ways.

In return, she was promised a piece of the action for the real estate that had been purchased. These were relatively small buildings and small investments and shopping centers and things like that, but the money was huge – tens of millions of dollars. Her percentage of it was rather small but was important to her because she was looking toward retirement. I took the case on contingency, which was crazy, but I thought she couldn't afford it and I liked her. We went through depositions, and she testified quite forcefully.

I was against a lawyer who was a very aggressive, cantankerous, rude, difficult person. In the middle of the case, during one of the negotiating sessions, he said he'd learned that I had it on a contingent basis and that he was going to burn me out. He was going to make it so expensive that I couldn't stay in the case. I thought about it for a while, and I talked to my client and said, "I can't let that stand for the firm and I can't let it stand for you." We can't have a reputation where somebody says they're going to burn me out and that I settle. I just can't do that. So I basically told him that we would never settle the case after that threat.

For the rest of the trial case, the cantankerous lawyer tried to get me to settle, and I told him we wouldn't talk about settlement. Eventually we were forced into mediation, and I told the mediator we weren't going to settle. I had already been through this with him, and he had threatened me with burning me out – we're not going to settle. We ultimately ended up trying the case and the jury came back in about 45 minutes and awarded her all her money, and  attorneys’ fees on top of that. She ended up having a nice retirement as a result. We preserved the reputation of the firm and also the reputation of this lady and got her what she deserved. It was a very expensive bet, but I felt like we did a good job as lawyers.

LD: How would you describe your style in the courtroom?

ML: I want everybody to have fun. I want the judge to understand and trust that I'm not going to go beyond the rules. The ones who know me know that I get chalk on my coat, but I don't go over the line. I'm very good about not violating the rules. The second thing is that I want to have fun. What we’re doing is a reaffirmation of humanity. We're all getting together and we're solving a human problem.

I'm also really good at cross-examination, because I think that opening statements and closing statements tell people what to do. The problem is that increasingly, you have a whole group of the population who does not like to be told what to do. My goal is basically to empower people to make decisions.

LD: Are there any trends that you're seeing in energy litigation these days?

ML: We represent a lot of midstream companies. The problem with the midstream companies is they're the people who manufacture the pipelines. First of all, they have to put in enormous amounts of capital in order to build a network of pipes and get the rights of way and that sort of thing. Those pipelines make it so it's efficient to move gas around the country.

So these midstream companies take an enormous economic risk to build a pipeline not knowing whether or not they can fill it up. They have to get contracts that last a long time – sometimes 30 years. It's a little like getting married. Some of the marriages work out, and then some of them don't. We're involved in a lot of litigation involving the contracts that don't work out. People spend enormous amounts of money trying to figure out how to break the contracts.

LD: I hear you hiked the Appalachian Trail?

ML: I decided that I needed to get out and do something where your money no longer counts and your station in life no longer counts, and you have a completely different name. You have your trail name that you go by – my trail name is Tinman. A friend of mine is trying to get me to go for a major hike in Turkey. I might succumb. We'll see.