Rob Henry

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Rob Henry’s Fort Worth Attorney Blog – Personal Injury & Business Stories

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The Legal Environment in Texas vs Other Places

The local legal market in Fort Worth, Dallas and the surrounding cities is very saturated with lawyers. Anybody looking to hire a lawyer needs to be careful and needs to do the research on the lawyer. And that’s not a knock on any particular lawyer. In any big market, it’s going to be saturated with attorneys. That’s good and bad. The bad thing is you get lots of bad attorneys out there who don’t know what they’re doing, and frankly, they just need the business and they’re not looking to help the client and do what’s best for them. That’s one thing.

If you look at the justice system in Texas,  it’s changing dramatically. There have been lots of laws passed in regards to tort reform, and that that has changed the legal scene in Texas over the last few years. (although maybe not as dramatically as some people think.)

Obviously, Texas is a very conservative state, and that translates over to juries. You’re dealing with (in a lot of cases) conservative juries, and you have to take that into account when you go to trial, anticipating the people on the jury are likely to be conservative, how they’re going to react to your case, and what you think they’ll do. That’s why typically, if I have personal injury case, if the person wants to go to trial I want to make sure that they carefully weigh their options and they consider the settlement offer. At the end of the day, Texas is Texas, and you’re going to have conservative juries. I think that makes Texas different from other states.

The diversity of Texas is also something that separates it from other states. Just because it’s a conservative jury doesn’t mean you can’t get a favorable verdict. It just means you have to understand the people and you have to maybe explain things differently to them. It varies from community to community. Now, a jury in Tarrant County is going to be different from a jury in Stephens County, or a jury in Dallas County is going to be different from a jury in Ellis County. So, you have to take that into account. It’s a large and complicated state.

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The Reason I Got a Joint JD(Law)/MBA May Surprise You

I think that typically, the legal needs of a small to medium-sized business in this town are overlooked. I think there are lots of firms that market and cater and they want to get just the big businesses in town. We won’t name them, but we all know who they are, and I think that’s who most of the firms and attorneys and town try to gun for. This isn’t just Fort Worth, this is the surrounding area. There are lots of great businesses out there.

There are lots of great law firms in Fort Worth, but I think the mistake that lots of law firms make is they just want to get the big businesses as clients. Getting “big clients” is great and there’s nothing wrong with that, but this strategy often overlooks the needs of the smaller to medium-sized businesses, which are great and do very well in their own right. So, I think in this town there is a need for that. That’s one of the reasons why I pursued the joint JD/MBA (both a law degree and a masters in business) – to serve those types of businesses. The SMB (like everyone) needs to manage costs, but also needs a special skill set in both law and business. That’s what I set out to do.

I always make sure to have a special relationship with my clients, and I think if you’re at a larger firm, they just look at you like a file. My firm won’t do that. I take your case very seriously, and want to know you and your business (and what makes it tick).

One of the reasons I think I’ve had success with representing smaller and medium-sized businesses is that they feel that they just get kind of lost in the shuffle at some of the larger firms. That’s not something that my firm is ever going to do.

I take pride in working with the businesses I do and always want to make sure that they know that they’re important clients. In my opinion, that’s just good business for a lawyer.

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Partnership Ownership: The Most Important Advice I Can Offer

There are often many types of recurring patterns that you see in these business break ups. One of the most common is that there is a partner that is investing or owns the majority of the capital and another partner that is the talent and does most of the work.

For instance, partner X had started the business many years ago and sometime along the way hired partner Y as an employee. Partner Y was very talented and with his involvement the business began to grow significantly. Partner X and eventually made partner Y a 10% partner and over time partner X and partner Y would become 50/50 partners. Their overall business relationship consisted of multiple LLC and LPs.

There was a time when Partner X and Partner Y got along great, but over time that relationship deteriorated. Neither one wanted to work with the other, but their corporate documents did not provide for an adequate way to divide up the business and move on.

Probably the most important piece of advice I could offer is to retain your own individual counsel when formulating the partnership agreement. First of all, obviously an attorney can help offer insight on the legal ramifications of the partnership agreement. But also, again many of the conversations that you must have with your fellow partners when forming a business are awkward and uncomfortable. Attorneys can better work through these scenarios so that in the event things do go south, there will be a fair and adequate termination plan in place.

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The Value of Legal Counsel When Forming a Partnership

Easily the most common things we see in business breakups is that the parties were not represented by their own counsel in the formation of the partnership. More often than not, the scenario is that one of the partners hires a lawyer to draft the partnership agreement. What the other partners do not realize is that this attorney is not representing them individually.

Depending on how the attorney was hired, he is either representing the partner that hired him or possibly the new potential entity. In either scenario that attorney could not represent the other partners in their individual capacity because there is a conflict of interest. That’s not to say that the attorney drafting the agreement is not capable of drafting a fair partnership agreement, but the other partners must understand that they are going into the transaction not represented.

Of course cost is often a deterrent in not wanting to retain individual counsel from the offset, and that is certainly understandable. But keep in mind, in the event that the partnership does go south, you will have no option but to retain counsel. Representation during the partnership break up will be far more costly than what it would have been had you retained counsel to help negotiate the agreement.

If you choose to go into the transaction not represented by counsel, than you must thoroughly review the partnership agreement and all relevant documents. Do your best to work through the different scenarios in the event things go south and what the best way to amicably resolve the matter would be.

In that Tarrant County Case, although the parties hired an attorney to draft all of their corporate documents. Neither retained private counsel. As a result the methods for terminating their partnership were not very well suited for their particular type of business and did account for certain issues that they faced.

The first thing that always comes to everyone’s mind is to just liquidate everything and everyone takes their proportionate share and moves on. While this may seem like a great idea, it’s never this simple. Winding down a business is very complex and it touches on many different areas of law. First of all, the entity exists separately from the partners. Just because one partner wants to leave the LLC or the LP does not mean he can just force it to shut down. The partner still has a duty of loyalty to the business and the other partners.

Second the tax consequences for liquidating and winding up a partnership or an LLC can be severe. If this is the option that you choose, you must consult a CPA and determine if you can afford the tax liability. If you can afford it, then in many cases this will be the best option to get everything wrapped up so you can move on with your life. Secondly depending on the property that the partnership owns, liquidating a straight liquidation can be tricky.

Another problem that can arise is lots of times the assets aren’t really the kind that can just be liquidated. For instance, let’s say in our hypothetical example that the the partnerships only meaningful assets are service contracts. The partners thought that they could just divide up those service contracts evenly between each other and start their own separate company. The problem that arose was that many of the clients did not like the partner that that they were assigned and were understandably less than thrilled to be in the middle of a nasty breakup. In this situation many of the clients canceled their service contracts and signed with the competitors. Obviously this will cause the value of the business to go down significantly.

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Rob Henry: Why I Became an Attorney

Over the years, I’ve constantly joked that I wanted to become a lawyer just because I was bad at math. But that’s actually not really the reasons why.

My father was a lawyer and I always looked up to him. He had been practicing in Fort Worth for over 30 years, got started in 1981. He had a very reputable practice and no shortage of clients. I wasn’t entirely sure that I wanted to follow in his footsteps just yet. That wasn’t the driving force for my decision to practice law. No less, becoming a lawyer was just always in the back of my mind as a career option since I had that early exposure.

I attended Texas Tech and started taking political science classes. I became interested in how the law related to our government, politics, and so on. Building on my interest in law and justice, I sat for the LSAT and was lucky to remain at Texas Tech for law school. After earning my undergraduate degree in three and a half years, I decided to go for my MBA as well.

There’s an entirely different thought process with business education and going for your MBA than there is for attending law school, or college in general. MBA degrees are far more focused on efficiency, namely the ends instead of the means. People flock to MBA programs with a specific job or goal in mind. In contrast, a liberal arts or political science degree is less about the specific ends and more about the means: getting an education first and then seeing which doors it opens.

Having earned both a political science degree and an MBA, I feel I got a really broad perspective; which helped in law school and in my practice. Being able to see the difference in the means and the ends, and understanding the motivations and thought processes of others as a result, helps me make more informed observations about people as well as more informed decisions. Not all legal processes have efficient ends in mind like an MBA, and crafting a defense can be more about the means depending on the facts of the case.

Having both ends and means in mind is the way I bring something different and crucial to the field. So, that’s why I became a lawyer.

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Client Communications (What’s the Best Way to Get a Hold of Rob)

Many attorneys remain notoriously hard to reach, requiring their clients to have schedule face-to-face meetings days in advance. While attorneys certainly need to remain mindful of the fact that all written communications are open to third-party interception, it’s true that many attorneys remain somewhat in the Dark Ages of technology. So, what about Rob Henry?

Best Option: Contact His Office

Rob’s office always knows where he is and how to get in touch with him. Typically, his assistant will send him an email and follow up with him until he calls you or gets in touch some other way. Rob likes to speak to his clients directly and will usually call you back, from his office phone as much as possible but also from his cell phone. Even though he admits he’s forgetful, his assistant is not – she chases him down and makes sure he gets back to you.

What about Email or Texting?

Rob does email with clients, but prefers to talk, as many people struggle to be able to communicate effectively in writing. Part of Rob’s job is to know how to ask the questions that help his clients express their thoughts and emotions, often on topics that are very stressful and hard to discuss. Rob finds email is not great for clarity and texting can actually be detrimental to clear communications, so he prefers to talk to his clients. He has always found that more of a personal touch produced the best results when communicating with his clients.

Can I Have His Cell Number?

Rob does give his cell number to clients when absolutely necessary but he prefers not to, although not for the reasons you might think. Clients can sometimes obsess about their legal cases and he finds that if he talks to them every day, the obsession gets worse. Rob tries to encourage his clients to get on with their lives and speak with him once or twice a week or as necessary, rather than thinking of nothing else.

This approach minimizes their costs and usually produces better results than constant communication. Many attorneys will speak with you whenever you want, which might feel good, but it won’t feel good when you get the bill, and it makes it hard for you to do anything except think about your case.