In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Mike Spivey hosts Trey Cox, co-chair of Gibson Dunn's global litigation practice group, on his legal career (4:18, 31:27), law school selection (9:20), hiring philosophies (16:42), and advice for aspiring law students and lawyers.
Trey and Mike both recommend the book Brain Rules by John Medina, which you can learn more about here.
You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube. You can read a full transcript of this episode with timestamps below.
Full Transcript:
Mike Spivey: Welcome to Status Check with Spivey, where we talk about life, law school, law school admissions, a little bit of everything. This is Mike Spivey, I'm the CEO of the Spivey Consulting Group, and I just had the great fortune to spend an hour with Trey Cox. Trey is Gibson Dunn's Co-Chair of their entire global litigation practice. He's also the Co-Partner in Charge of the Dallas office. Trey has such a great perspective on, for example, hiring. He takes a deep interest in hiring. What does Gibson Dunn, what does Trey Cox look for when they're hiring out of law schools, and what do they deemphasize? I think part of his answers are going to surprise many of our listeners. We talk about, how did Trey select a law school? And he came up with an index of sorts when he was looking at Harvard Law and Yale Law and UVA, where he ultimately matriculated to, and LSU from his home state. How did he come up with his own sort of return on investment and ultimately decide to matriculate to UVA?
We covered a good bit in our 55 minutes together, but I think at the end, when I asked Trey about how he accelerated so rapidly in his career, something I noticed was, he never mentioned himself. He talked about the strength of the people around him. So, Trey's a very humble person, but he is a heavy hitter in the legal profession, and it was wonderful to learn from him. Without further delay, here's me and Trey. Trey, it's great to have you. Thanks for making the time. I know how busy you are.
Trey Cox: Thank you for having me. I'm really glad to be here, Mike.
Mike: [1:40] So before we get into your legal career, there's a rumor circulating. Is it true that you and your esteemed colleague, Jeff Chapman, who's the Global Chair of Gibson's M&A practice, did you just get back from a Backstreet Boys concert in Las Vegas?
Trey: Your sources are correct. Jeff Chapman and I did attend the Backstreet Boys concert at the Sphere in Las Vegas. But in our defense, there is a backstory to this. We had previously attended together the U2 concert at the Sphere. And by the way, I should add that this is with our wives. And we really enjoyed the experience for the U2 concert. And then we went back about six months later and saw the Eagles at the Sphere.
And then the Backstreet Boys—because we're both sort of generationally mismatched for the Backstreet Boys. But I'm in court all day. Working, arguing, some hearing or something like that. I step out of court at the end of the day, check my phone, and I have something like 42 text messages. And I check like, "What in the world is going on?" And it is Jeff, my wife, and his wife all going back and forth. "The Backstreet Boys are at the Sphere. We should go. We should go." And before I could even pipe in, everybody had agreed and we were all scheduled to go with tickets and hotel rooms to the Backstreet Boys. So that's how Jeff Chapman and Trey Cox ended up with the Backstreet Boys.
Mike: [3:04] I was recently in Las Vegas and stayed at the Wynn, overlooking the Sphere or the Encore, and it's amazing. I know why you mentioned your wives; you don't want any allegations of untoward Coldplay-like activity.
I know Jeff and Kim very well. Jeff's a close friend, and I think you'll relate to this. Jeff's the kind of guy, I could do him one half of a favor in my lifetime, he could do me 500, which he has, and he would remember it the exact opposite. He would think he owes me when he's given me 25 years of mentorship. I'm really appreciative of everything you, Jeff, and Gibson have done for our little firm, too.
Trey: [3:39] Glad to do it. And I will absolutely agree with you that, you know, I moved over here to Gibson five years ago, and the absolute most sort of serendipitous friendship—and especially, you know, when you're a 50-year-old guy, there's not a lot of new friendships, sort of deep friendships that you make in life—but moving over here and starting my friendship with Jeff Chapman and just the wonderful human being that both Jeff and Kim are is one of the real benefits of moving to Gibson Dunn.
Mike: Well, Jeff tells me you're the most powerful guy in Dallas right now, so let's get to you.
Trey: Well, that hurts Jeff's credibility fairly significantly.
Mike: [4:18] So let's go back in time. What was your interest in law? And by the way, that's a law school application question. Why law?
Trey: Why the law? Well, you know, it was a fairly easy decision for me. I played football in college and I took my meager athletic talents—I know this about myself; I'm a competitive person—and I took my meager athletic talents as far as they and as long as they would allow me to compete, which was at a Division 3 football program. And I said, "Okay, well, I need to decide how I'm going to continue to exercise my competitive nature."
And it was either going to be as a football coach, or it was going to be going to law school and doing trial work. And I sort of figured that I was afraid, actually, of going to coach, because if I went to coach football, I figured I'd love that and I'd be doing it for the rest of my life. And so I thought it was probably a better decision to go to law school, and then if law school didn't work out, I could always fall back on coaching. So that's how I ended up going towards law school.
Mike: And also, why litigation over transactional, right? Because you wanted to compete in the courtroom.
Trey: Yeah, I wanted to compete in the courtroom. I enjoyed the challenge of that. I had reasons to believe that I would be a reasonably good advocate. I thought that's where my talents and my interests were.
Mike: I have to ask you a question aside from anything that we're going to talk about. I get to steward a firm of 40 intellectuals. You just chatted before with our president, Anna Hicks-Jaco. If I go become a college president, she's going to be my defensive coordinator, but she doesn't differentiate linebacker from tight end, so we're going to struggle as a team. [5:50] I get a chance to ask you, who do you think works longer hours? The global litigation chair of Gibson Dunn, or a coach of college football?
Trey: I actually probably think at the top level, at the highest level, sort of, you know, the Gibson Dunn level of Division 1 football, I think those coaches probably work equally as hard. I've read a bunch of biographies of coaches and, you know, you read stuff about Nick Saban and the various ones, and I mean, it's a grind. The coaching season, the processing of the film, the recruiting of the players in the off season. I think it is a pretty relentless process, and I would guess that they probably work as hard. Again, I also have the theory that good things really only come from hard work. If you want to produce consistently at an excellent level, it takes hard work.
Mike: Yeah. We just had former CIA Director General David Petraeus on, and he used the words multiple times, “operational tempo,” to refer to hard work, and his point, which tell me if it's true or not for what you do, "I'm not working at this tempo five days a week. I'm working at this tempo as director of the CIA seven days a week." There's no cease to the tempo. Similar?
Trey: I think that in today's world, that is true for almost all thought workers, right? I mean, there is no time that you can't work. If you're constantly working on trying to solve a problem, unlock the Rubik's cube, you're sort of always twisting it and turning it over in your mind. Whether you're exercising, you're taking a shower, the back of your mind is sort of always running on these problems and a desire to solve these problems. And so I think, you know, it happens all the time.
Mike: Yeah. And that happens at our firm too. We're 24/7 spinning around, what's the worst case? What's the best case? What's the most likely?
Trey: [7:39] I actually get up at five o'clock in the mornings and I go for about an hour-long walk, and believe it or not, that hour in some senses is the most productive freeform thinking of my entire day. You know, I'm thinking through things, I listen to audiobooks while I walk, and so different things connect and click, and it's something about moving and thinking at the same time.
Mike: So I'm up at 3:00, 3:30, but I go to bed early. And that's 4:00, your time. So now I know when to text you when I'm in a panic mode. I'm hiking up in the mountains in Colorado. There's a great book called Brain Rules about how we think best when we're moving, for evolutionary reasons. It's by [John] Medina. I've recommended it to hundreds, if not thousands, of law students.
Trey: I've read that book, and it's actually one of the foundational books. It talks a lot about neuroscience and how the brain processes images, and so it's another piece of one of my big theories about how you present things at trial, meaning that what I want is, when I do a PowerPoint presentation, I want big dynamic images and few words. This is Medina's stuff, is I want them to be able to process the images quickly and come back to the presenter, whether it's me or the witness, that sort of thing.
Mike: That's so interesting. We'll put a link to Medina's book in the show notes for this podcast. You decided you want to go to law school. You're competitive. That appeals to you. It was probably roughly 20 years ago. Are there any formative memories of the admissions—I know you went to UVA law, where our president Anna Hicks also went on a full ride. They paid Anna to go to UVA law. That's pretty impressive.
Trey: That is impressive. Well, you're being charitable on the timelines, because it was actually 30 years ago. It was over 30 years ago. I had my 30th reunion at UVA last year. And I applied before I graduated. I know that!
Mike: [9:20] What stands out from 30 years ago, if anything? And if nothing, that would be an interesting data point too, because a lot of our listeners are going to be, they're thick in the middle of this right now.
Trey: I had much more of sort of a pragmatic decision to make. I had some scholarships and things like that, but I had, aside from that, paid for my undergraduate education, and then I was going to be paying for my law school education. And so, in looking out at the various different options, I remember this very clearly. I went to Washington and Lee, so I was in Virginia. I was pretty sure that I wanted to go to law school. I was from Louisiana originally, and my whole plan, to tell you the truth, Mike, was I was going to go to play football, and then I was going to go back to Louisiana and go to law school, go to LSU.
I had a professor, a guy named John Evans, my second semester my freshman year, did sort of the equivalent of pick me up, dusted me off. He was an English professor and said, "Come now, Mr. Cox, you're better than this." He challenged me and said, "You can do these things." And he introduced me to people. He was a true mentor that single-handedly changed the trajectory of my life.
And he introduced me to Jack Goldsmith and said, "Look what Jack Goldsmith did. Jack went and did a Rhodes Scholarship. Jack went to Yale Law School. Let me introduce you to Jim Barker, who today is at Latham & Watkins. Jim went to UVA law school and then he clerked on the 11th Circuit and then went to Latham. Let me introduce you to Mike McKelvey. Mike went to UVA. He clerked on the 11th Circuit. You too can do all of these things." And so it raised my perspective.
But when I looked at these things and I looked at sort of the Yales and the Harvards and Virginias—I looked at Harvard, and I remember this very distinctly—Harvard's annual tuition, and this is aside from room and board, was about $21,000 a year. And I looked at Virginia's tuition, and Virginia for in-state status, which I had qualified for by being at Washington and Lee for the prior four years, was $8,700.
And when you're paying for stuff yourself and sort of, I looked at the compounding of loans, I made the applications, but when I actually looked at it and I said, "Okay, I can get into UVA, the cost of living is going to be far less expensive in Charlottesville, Virginia than it is going to be in some other places, and the tuition is less." I sort of looked at it from a cost-benefit analysis. This is not a very glamorous decision-making process, but I said I liked $8,700 a year for a top 10 law school over $21,000 a year for a top three law school.
Mike: [12:03] So is it a fair statement that demonstrably your career is no different, by your best estimation, having gone to what you refer to as a top 10 law school over a top 3 law school? Because this is a question we get as a firm all the time, and we'll talk later about your interest in hiring.
Trey: Here's what I'll say to that. It's ultimately impossible for me to be able to answer that question. Like I said, I made a practical cost-benefit analysis. The one thing that I do believe is that there are some networking aspects. And I've seen it in the business world, the networks that people that graduate from Harvard Business School or from Harvard Law School or certain schools like that, I think that there are significant network advantages.
Now, the network that I had at UVA is also wonderful and great. But the primary advantage—I think law school teaches you a vocabulary, and it teaches you an analytical process to identify risks. I'm not sure that getting that education at Harvard versus getting that education at UVA is appreciably different. The question in my mind is whether the people that you have the opportunity to meet and associate with and the trajectory of those people's careers and connections, whether that would provide you an appreciable advantage.
I talk to a lot of people about this, but the other thing that I would add in terms of how you select a law school is, you need to think about where it is that you want to work, and the ranking of your law school does have or can potentially have some geographic limitations. If you graduate in the top two of your class from almost most any law school, I think you can probably go and you can try to extend your geographic boundaries. You graduate #1 at Minnesota, which is a very good law school, I think you can call firms in LA and DC and New York and say, "I graduated #1, #2, #5 , at Minnesota," and you can go to those cities and you'll be given a fair opportunity. If you're at Virginia, Harvard, Yale, Chicago, I think the entire United States is what your geographic opportunity is. If you graduate from LSU Law School, maybe if you're #1 you can call up the firms in Texas, Houston, Dallas.
And again, I'm not criticizing LSU. It's a very good law school. They're moving up the rankings, I believe, as I understand it. They have a very good new dean. But it's harder to knock on the doors of an Am Law 10 law firm and say, "I graduated from LSU Law School in the top third," and get an opportunity to join a New York or a Los Angeles law firm. You can still have plenty of opportunities in Louisiana and other places. I am sure there's certain law schools that are going to position you better, more traditionally for a big law type of job and career.
Mike: [14:52] There's a second twist to everything you just said that I do want to click on. Before we began this conversation, were you aware that UVA is now ranked higher than Harvard in the U.S. News rankings?
Trey: Actually, I saw that, and the new dean at Virginia came and spoke to us probably about four months ago. Now I think we're higher than Harvard. I think we're now #4 in the country. But I also believe the way the rankings are done now, I think there's about four law schools at number four, aren't there?
Mike: [15:18] There are multiple ties throughout the rankings. But the point that I love to make—I put Jeff Chapman on the spot. I asked him if he could do this. I've probably asked anywhere between 200 to 500 hiring partners, hiring partners who would know more than anyone, "Can you name the top 10 law schools?" And they can't. Not a single person has yet to get it right, because they tend to think about the schools when they went to law school.
And so what we tell law school students is, if there's a one-year change in these arbitrary rankings, the metrics of which—how many seats in the library, how many librarians to students—might make sense to some people but make complete utter nonsense to other people: One-year changes in the rankings are near meaningless to the Trey Coxes in the world. You might differentiate UVA and Harvard in one group to Minnesota in another group to LSU in a third group, and you might seek, tell me if I'm wrong, a top 5 person or top 10 from LSU, top 20% from UVA. But you're not differentiating between UVA and Harvard at all, I'm guessing. It goes deeper than that when you're identifying candidates.
Trey: That's right. Although I'll admit, I have a soft spot for UVA candidates.
Mike: Of course you do.
Trey: One of my best recruiting classes was I had four UVA Law Review students, and I couldn't be happier with that particular class that we brought on board.
Mike: Well, you’re not going to steal our firm's president away from us, then, are you, Trey?
Trey: No. I think she's very secure.
Mike: [16:42] Well, and you and I talked a little bit about beforehand, during an interview process, you said it, so I'll let you say it, but what should the candidate be doing?
Trey: I mean, you know, what we were talking about earlier is, as I said, what's everybody's favorite subject? And we were talking about it in the context of, I'm not sure that I believe that law firm interviews are the greatest diagnostic tool to determine whether or not someone's law career is going to be successful. But, if you're going to do an interview and if you want to execute a successful interview, everyone's favorite subject is themselves.
And so if you can direct the conversation to the interviewer rather than you, the interviewee, and you can ask them questions and let them talk 75% of the time, and you only talk 25% of the time, I think you'll generally find that the interviewer walks away from that interview with a wonderfully positive impression about how charming you are and how good of a conversationalist they are, after they just got to talk to you for 75% of that 20-minute interview.
Mike: [17:40] Yeah, 100% agree. I was responsible for a thousand students' career placement during the Great Recession. And some things I would say is, you know, ask them, what is it about Gibson Dunn that you like? What is it about litigation that you like? Have them read the Wall Street Journal for the next three weeks before they interview. Can you organically bring in current events to the conversation and let them talk about things going on in the business market, which is why I said Wall Street Journal, all those things.
Trey: I completely agree and sort of, you know, what is the purpose of those interviews? I just don't think that there's much that you can tell about the candidate, but the one thing that I'm definitely looking for is, I'm looking for positive attitude. I'm looking for interest, I'm looking for high energy. And quite frankly, in an interview, you can tell pretty quickly whether someone has done their homework, checked out the law firm and what it's about and what it focuses on and who are the people that are interviewing them and what's of interest.
In fact, that's something that I often do when I'm interviewing someone and I like them. I ask them, "Okay, who are you interviewing with next?" And we sort of talk about who else they're interviewing with. And I do almost like an in-interview prep session and run through the history and background of the additional people that are going to be interviewing them.
Mike: You just said something that was remarkable to me. You're interviewing Sally from UVA law and you're asking her, "Who else in Dallas or globally are you interviewing with," and then you're helping her prepare for her next interview?
Trey: That's for our internal people, by the way. Let me make sure that I point that out. When they come in to interview with us, they interview with about five or six people, and so I find out who internally here at Gibson. I'm not helping them for their interview across the street. I'm helping them and preparing them to make sure that they continue to get positive reviews from the remainder of the interviews here.
Mike: Got you. Okay. If you really want to put someone in a tough bind, take the person you're interviewing, start helping them for their interview down the street the next day. And you want to hire them, and you're encouraging them to have a great interview with a firm right next door, and see how calm they remain That would be a high-stress situation! Because my mind when I'm 25 years old is reading, "Trey Cox must hate me. He's trying to set me up for my next job."
Trey: [19:53] I don't put that much pressure on them, but I do always generally ask them, who else are they interviewing with? And I like to hear who they're interviewing with, and I like to hear what they're interested in, is what I really like. Again, that shows maturity; that shows interest. If they're like, “Well, I still don't know if I want to do transactional or I want to do litigation," you know, I think there's a general feeling here at the firm that you should have time to develop. And that's fine. I sort of view it as, these are at least 23, 24-year-old individuals. They should have a better plan about what it is they want to be when they grow up.
Mike: Yeah, we tell our clients, "At the bottom of your resume have a skills and interests section, because it's not going to hurt to humanize you," but also if you put Dungeons and Dragons on your interests, and the person interviewing you happens to play Dungeons and Dragons at 50, welcome to your job offer. Or in my case, college football or high-altitude trail running. We are evolutionarily hardwired to be drawn towards people that we feel comfortable and are similar to ourselves.
Trey: [20:54] I think that's very good advice. I completely agree with that. That's one of the things I also like to ask. I care much more about, where'd you grow up? What do your mom and dad do? Right? I'm trying to understand a little bit more about their foundations. I interviewed a kid today, and I say kid, I mean he's 25, 26 years old. He's a kid compared to me. His two parents were doctors. No lawyers in his family. They're clearly educated. They had gone to graduate school, they had had successful professional careers, and he had gone sort of in a completely different direction into the law. But it was very interesting to talk to him about his progression and his development and how he got there from his upbringing.
Mike: [21:34] And to be clear, if the candidate says, "I never met my dad, and my mom is a recovering alcoholic," you want to know that too, because it shows…?
Trey: Grit is what it shows. And I grew up, I had two parents, and we weren't the richest people in the world or anything. I mean, they gave me and my brother a very nice upbringing. They stressed to us the importance of education and self-reliance and sent us out into the world. I was sort of given a very large ball and told not to drop it. I didn't have anywhere near the level of challenges that the candidate that you're describing, and if that candidate can do as good as someone who had every advantage in the world, I want to hire that candidate.
I tell everybody here is, I like a little mutt in the dog, right? I don't like the perfect pedigree. I mean, I'm happy to have the perfect pedigree, but I also like to see someone who survived, someone who fought, someone who had overcome very hard things. That's somebody that I'm going to take a very significant, very special interest in and help develop.
Mike: If they've been knocked down six times and they've gotten up seven, that always stood out to me as an admissions officer,
Trey: I completely and wholeheartedly agree, and I actually think that's a unique skillset and it is extraordinarily hard to overcome. Part of it is it doesn't have the family support or it doesn't have the mentor like I had in college that picked me up and dusted me off. Like that's somebody who can do it, and just think how good they’d do if they had the support they had, the buildup, the development, the vision, the assistance in envisioning things, that I had along the way.
Mike: [23:08] I also want to thank you for saying that's “unique” and not that's “very unique.” A pet peeve of mine is when applicants say something is “very unique” or “somewhat unique,” because unique is binary. It either is or isn't. So you would get admitted to Spivey Consulting Law School based on accurate terminology.
When you were at UVA, is there any moment that stands out that was particularly nerve-wracking to you or, alternatively, particularly transformational as far as how you got to where you are today?
Trey: [23:35] I think that probably the best thing that I did throughout my UVA process, they had the, what they called the William Minor Lile Moot Court Competition. And the moot court competition at UVA is something that takes place over your entire law school career. And you start with, you know, your first semester of legal research and writing. You write your memo. Then the second semester, you do your brief and you do an oral argument, and then you do the oral argument and they select, I can't remember whether it's 32 or whatever, to actually make it to the second round. And so you'll continue on in your second year at law school. You pick a partner and then y'all team up and you do it the whole time.
And so I think I told you I went to Washington and Lee undergrad and I was an English major, I was captain of the football team, and then one of the women that was there with me from W&L at Virginia, she had been the captain of the soccer team and she was an English major as well. And we had been good friends. And so Elise and I teamed up as the team and continued on throughout, and we were fortunate enough to argue in the finals, which takes place in the second semester your third year of law school. And we had Judge Easterbrook come in from the Seventh Circuit, and we had the Chief Justice of the Indiana Supreme Court, and I can't remember who the third judge was, but big deal. Our opponents were two people who, interestingly, had been in my original small section, first year of law school. Julia Resnick and Diane Long.
At the time, we did all of this argument, and the whole process was, you had to write multiple briefs, you had to argue, you had to answer, you had to keep getting up there and keep doing things. Especially your third year, you did it in front of the whole law school. So, you know, it gave me opportunity to really test whether what I think I like to do is stand up in front of people and talk.
But the finals of the William Minor Lile Moot Court Competition, the winners based on the brief and the argument were Julia and Diane, my first-year section mates, and the best oral advocate was Elise Darden, my partner. So the only one who didn't get a prize out of that was me.
Mike: Of course.
Trey: [25:38] I think it's very important, if you're going to choose to do litigation or you're going to choose to do the law or really any sort of professional career, there are going to be ups; there are going to be downs. And as we talked about that, how you persevere and how you continue on. And also, you know, when you have successes, you should celebrate them. And if you have losses, that's not final. It's not determinative. You just keep going and you say, "Hey, how could I have improved my process? How could I have improved my delivery? How can I sharpen the saw at what I'm doing?" And so, that whole process was a learning process and sort of a microcosm of, they call it the practice of law for a reason. You continue to practice, you continue to grow, you continue to develop.
Mike: [26:25] We've had author Brad Stulberg, who's also a former athlete, and he coaches professional athletes. And we had him on our podcast, and he defined resilience as “rugged flexibility.” So you need to be rugged and have grit, but then you also need to be flexible and compassionate with yourself and say, "Well, okay, why didn't I get this award when my other three teammates did?" Not to beat myself up, but to maybe the next go around get the award. That's the flexibility part he references. I love that story.
Did you feel imposter syndrome in orientation? When you went from W&L to UVA, the first week of law school, did you look around and say to yourself, "These people must be more qualified than me"?
Trey: [27:03] I'm sure I had some of those, but there was also like, one of the second or third days at UVA—there’s always the question, "Do I belong? Am I really part of this group?"—and Bill Stuntz was my criminal law professor, and it was a big section, right? So that means it's four sections of 30. So it's like 120 kids in the classroom. And he calls on somebody who will remain nameless, in the back of the room, and this guy that I knew, guy that I liked, and it was almost the most incomprehensible answer I had ever heard in my entire life. No one in the class—not just me—no one in the whole class had any idea what he had just said. It did not make any sense. It was like his brain vapor locked when he did it. And so I'm like, "Okay, I can't do any worse than that."
Footnote, no failure is final. This guy went on to be a very strong member of the Virginia Law Review. He became a partner at Williams & Connolly. It had nothing to do with his horsepower or anything like that. He's a very smart guy. It was just first game jitters or something like that. But I was like, "Okay, I can do at least that good."
Mike: [28:15] Yeah, so to begin with, I think that we put so much pressure on ourselves, and we're so often critical of ourselves where we wouldn't be critical of our friend in the same situation. You weren't looking at that person—we'll call them Bill—obviously, Trey, when you're in the classroom, you weren't looking at Bill, beating him up. You were like, "This poor guy. I hope he's okay after." But Bill was beating himself up. Williams & Connolly is another firm we work really well with, and it's an exceptional law firm.
Trey: Fabulous law firm.
Mike: Exactly. Who hasn't been Bill in that situation? So maybe just, for the listeners—if you do nothing in the world, you're never going to be criticized. If you do nothing in the world, you're never going to hit vapor lock giving an answer to a law professor. But the alternative to me is even worse. The alternative to vapor lock is doing nothing with your day. I can't imagine.
Trey: [29:07] Yeah, get out there, do it. I liken it to sort of the minor leagues, right? Get up there and take at-bats, take cuts at pitches. If you strike out, okay, that doesn't mean you're never going to hit a baseball again. It means you need to figure out what you did, what you can prove, how you can change, and get back in there and do it again.
This is one of the things that I tell people all the time. "I want to get you here, and I want you to fail as fast as you possibly can, because those are the experiences and that's how you grow." No one's going to walk in—maybe there's somebody that's going to walk in here, I hadn't seen him yet—but somebody's going to walk in here and know how to do everything that we do as litigators. I mean, seeing different pitches, seeing situations, “Been here, done that, seen the movie, this is how I move, this is how I react, this is what I say.”
Mike: When I was in business school, I had a professor tell our class, the only things you offer as a brand-new employee are ebullient energy. To your point about interviewing, upbeat energy and work ethic. That's it. That's all you offer on day 1. Now, some people will have a learning curve deeper than others and start offering back, but on day 1, you better show up 10 minutes early and be enthusiastic, because you're not practicing law for Gibson Dunn day 1. And I think that's what you're talking about.
Trey: Yeah. I also tell people, the earlier you are in your career, the more often you should say, "Yes, I will do that. Yes, I will trade more of my time for opportunities and experiences." All of those opportunities and experiences that you can possibly get into yourself.
Mike: [30:41] A hundred percent. You're talking to me and I haven't shaved and I'm in roughly a t-shirt, but Jeff will tell you, there was a part of my career from age 25 to 50, or 47 we'll call it, where I was saying “yes” to every possible thing. And I was in a suit every day. And now at roughly around 50, I have the freedom to say “no” to a lot more things because I said yes to everything when I was 25, 35.
Trey: You earned the right, and you earned the knowledge to know what you should say “no” to.
Mike: Yeah. There's a quote from the movie, it's not Band of Brothers, but the war movie where Tom Hanks says to the character who survived, I think it was Matt Damon, "You know, everyone else died. You survived. Earn it. Live up to it."
Speaking of earning things, in the little bit of time we have left, you've risen pretty quickly in your career to the global litigation chair of a top 10 law firm. How did that happen? What do you attribute that to?
Trey: [31:39] I think I probably attribute it to two things. #1, I had been a partner at my own firm, a prior firm, for 20 years prior to joining Gibson Dunn. It was a litigation boutique. It wasn't anywhere near the size and with all the locations that Gibson Dunn has, but I had spent 20 years being involved in, or substantially involved in, the running and operations of a law firm. And so all of the different things that you confront in sort of the operation of a law firm—business development, personnel, hiring, management, visioning, all of those things—I had been involved in and had a pretty significant amount of experience in, which is to say, I had failed faster than most people here at Gibson Dunn because I had had sort of a unique opportunity to be involved in those things.
And so then I move my practice over. I actually moved to Gibson Dunn, believe it or not, on April Fool's Day of 2020, all of about three days into COVID. You know, I took about eight months, got my practice, moved over here, and that's when they asked me to start running the Dallas office.
And so, one of the things that I thought, and again this is sort of the second part of this question, is I don't think it's all me. I think a lot of it has to do with the Texas economy and the opportunity that presented itself here in Texas. So when I took over this Dallas office, we had 52 lawyers in Dallas and we had no litigators in Houston. And I sort of said, "Look, the people that we have here are absolutely fabulous. They're wonderfully talented. They're top 1% type of talent, but we don't have enough of them." As the opportunities are growing, so many different businesses are moving their headquarters here. Texas is now the headquarters of headquarters in the country. We have more headquarters of Fortune 500 companies in Texas than any other state. And so it's a matter of, how do we create the opportunities and how do we make sure that we have the resources here for the Gibson Dunn brand?
And so over the course of the last four or five years, we've grown this Dallas office from 52 lawyers to 125 lawyers. So substantial growth, and we have not gone down at all in terms of the talent and excellence in the office. And we have maintained very high utilization numbers. We actually, in the Dallas office, we have the highest utilization numbers in the whole firm. That means the people that we have here are all fully and highly occupied. I would add, not at a burnout rate, not at a 2,300-hour-a-year rate, but it's something that is much more appropriate.
And in addition, we started the litigation practice down in Houston with a couple of excellent additions. Colin Cox, not related to me, but got him from a litigation boutique, an excellent litigation boutique. Yetter Coleman in Houston and then persuaded Greg Costa to do the reverse commute off of the Fifth Circuit and come here.
And so when you start adding everything that's going on in Texas in terms of business, and you say, okay, we have people like Collin Cox, like Gregg Costa from the Fifth Circuit, Allyson Ho, who's really one of the premier appellate advocates in the entire country. And then we have sort of the Gibson Dunn balance sheet and compensation opportunities for associates. The excellent cost of living here in Texas compared to some of the other metropolitan areas in the country. Quite frankly, we're able to stockpile talent here in Texas to the advantage of the whole firm.
And so all of these things have combined to make sort of the Texas offices here the fastest growing aspect of Gibson Dunn. And then litigation, for the Dallas office, litigation is probably 65 or 70% of the personnel here. And so, it's just a combination of different things and opportunities that gave us a little bit of a claim to say that it's a Texas miracle, that we're doing some things right down here and they might want to copy some of the things that we've been doing.
Mike: [35:41] Yeah. So for the record, I asked you what it was about you that propelled you to the top, and the entire answer was about the Dallas office. I think what propelled you to the top is that you have a purpose greater than yourself. And I know you care. You told me a story about a young associate that you hired who crushed a lead lawyer in trial. I would argue that your care for your team would factor into how much you've propelled to the top of a firm. And you don't have to say yes or no. I just know that instinctively.
Trey: [36:10] Here's what I'll tell you. My other path was, I wanted to go be a football coach. And I never really got to be a football coach, but I do have three daughters, all of whom I coached at various stages in their basketball careers. And so I coached a bunch of girls’ basketball teams. And my first year that I coached, we were 12-0. They were awesome. I had to, like, throttle these girls back during some of the games because they were so far ahead. Gotta have three passes before anybody shoots, no fast breaks, all that kind of stuff. And at the end of the season, I said, "I'm pretty good at this coaching stuff. I know what I'm doing here.”
The next year, the only thing that was the same was me and my daughter on that team. And the outcome was not the same. That first team that I coached, five of those girls had multiple varsity letters for a 5A Texas high school. Two of them were D1 athletes at schools. And so, I now understand that great players make the coach look really good. And so I am very focused on great players, because that's where it all starts, is on the talent of the players and the people around you. Right? There's no way I could accomplish or we could accomplish the things that we can accomplish without all of the talented people that we have here.
Mike: [37:27] A hundred percent. Even though we're called Spivey Consulting Group, 13 years ago, it was me. And that's when we were weakest as a firm. And now there's 40 consultants and people on our team, and we've never been stronger than we are today. And it's because we brought in people much more talented than me who can do things that I can't. I mean, in year 1, I think our revenue was $38,000, Trey. Revenue, not profit.
Trey: The way—Washington and Lee, the way it's grown and the way it's improved, and the same thing with UVA, I'm very glad that I got in when I did. I'm not sure that, given what the standards are at both of those institutions of higher learning, that either one of them would still allow me in today.
Mike: [38:08] They'll still ask you for fundraising money. I'm sure of that.
Final question. The cycle is beginning in a couple weeks. You can submit your law school applications. Someone who is about to enter this world that you've lived—and conquered more days than not, not all days—any final piece of advice for someone about to start?
Trey: [38:25] The main thing that you need to think about, #1, is it really what you want to do? Are you committed to it? Because I'll take you another step further. The way that the hiring processes have gone, they have done nothing but accelerate, accelerate, accelerate. And so what I would tell you is make your decision, get in that law school, and especially on your first semester, you need to treat that like a job. First impressions are most important. That first set of grades that you get that very first semester, our summer clerks are coming to us based on one semester of law school grades.
And so, you really need to get in there and do everything that you possibly can to be successful in that very first semester and that very first year of law school, because in many respects it will sort of set the trajectory of what your career possibilities—I'm not saying you can't catch up down the road. Can you use a clerkship and cycle and change? You know, there's other tactics and techniques that you can use, but that first semester of law school has become super important in today's modern hiring processes.
Mike: [39:33] The timing's impeccable. Our next podcast, we've already recorded it, we have two people, one who does career services at Georgetown, talking about that first semester and how critical it is and that accelerated timeline.
Trey: Yeah, and so that's where I say it's like, find people who are in the second-year class, find people who were successful, find people who are on the law review. I assume that they still use outlines and things like that, but I mean, find those people. Do your research. Do the same things that you're talking about preparing for an interview. Find out everything you can about the professors and about what they teach and about how they do the examinations and those things.
Mike: [40:10] And my final piece of advice is going to sound oxymoronic to yours, but it's not. Almost anything is recoverable. I mean, barring extreme cases. If you don't do well your first semester, maybe you're running a 400-yard dash and maybe the people who do well, very well, their first semester, get a 20-yard head start on their career or a 30-yard head start. But if you go kill it at a boutique firm, at mid law, solo, government position, public interest, nothing is insurmountable because your first semester grades didn't get you into the OCI process. It just might take a little bit longer.
Trey: I completely agree with that, and it's a matter of, you know, what you want to do and how much do you want it and how hard are you willing to work.
Mike: Trey, thank you so much for your time. We know how busy you are and it was a great pleasure to have you on the podcast. Everything that Gibson Dunn has done for us, you, Jeff, I really want to thank you one more time.
Trey: Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to come and talk with you. I really enjoyed it. Thank you, Mike.