Oil & Gas Law Forum

[linquest]

Recent article from ABA, "It’s a golden age for Texas’ oil and gas transactional lawyers"- http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/arti ... l_lawyers/

[Anonymous User]

I do more than title but I'd rather not say what else. People do also have real estate practices but that's just by coincidence. They two have next to no overlap.

[texanwahoo]

Law student at a Texas school that shall remain nameless here. If you're wanting to go into O&G, UH Law is definitely your best bet. Not only is Houston the nexus of pretty much the entire global energy field, it's also the HQ city for a number of BigLaw firms with O&G practices (V&E being easily the most prominent, w/Baker Botts close behind). For this specific field, at least, I'd actually recommend UH over UT, particularly now that it's leapt into the T1 category in the 2014 U.S. News rankings (tied with SMU at #48, among others). Speaking of SMU, try to remember that Dallas isn't like "Dallas," the TV show, and the center of the oil industry is most definitely not there, though Dallas definitely has a more diversified business economy overall (in Houston energy and health care reign). Also, I'll point out that even if you're accepted into UT Law, your odds of hitting the top-10% at UH are vastly better b/c of UT's national status (and the resultant fact that many of your classmates will be from top-10 undergrad schools), and you'll frankly do much better in the O&G job market -- or, really, at *any* job at a BigLaw firm in Houston or Dallas -- with a top-10% UHLC degree than a top-30% UT one. (Ditto SMU for non-O&G jobs, and particularly if you want to live in Dallas; SMU Law alums are probably the most loyal in the state in terms of hiring fellow SMU grads.) UH isn't far below UT in terms of job prospects at NLJ T250 firms (ranked #27 and #16 respectively), and an unusually high % of grads end up working as corporate counsel for Big Oil.

As for the boom-and-bust cycle in Texas: that was pre-fracking. The Eagle Ford Shale will provide O&G, and all jobs related to it, for decades to come. It may be smaller than the likes of Marcellus, but the difference between the two is that most of Eagle Ford is under barren scrub brush, not "pristine forest and farm land." Eagle Ford's value as land alone is virtually worthless, hence the reason there's virtually nothing to be found in the 250 miles between San Antonio and the Mexican border at Nuevo Laredo, so there's little community or environmental opposition to the huge projects at Carrizo Springs and the like.

Finally, someone asked earlier about whether you need a technical degree. You might find it surprising that UH is ranked #7 in IP law, particularly since Austin's such a technology center, but remember that there's plenty of IP work in O&G, too. Generally speaking, you need at least *some* sort of technical background if you're going into IP, whether it's CS or engineering or whatever. At the very least you need to be able to understand highly technical material with ease. A BS or MS in some geology-related certainly helps as well. Again, that's only if you specifically want to work in IP; you don't need a technical background for O&G in general.

[texanwahoo]

Just FYI, for those worried about "feast or famine" in the Texas O&G industry, read the following (indicating that Texas accounts for 38% of ALL O&G employment in the country):

http://www.bizjournals.com/houston/news ... -jobs.html