D CEO Magazine featured four Haynes and Boone, LLP lawyers in its 2019 Dallas 500 directory, the annual listing of the most influential leaders in North Texas. Firm Co-Founder Michael Boone, Managing Partner Tim Powers, and Partners Melissa Goodman and Jeff Dorrill were included in the list.
Featuring the region’s most powerful leaders in more than 60 categories, the Dallas 500 provides an engaging, personal look at the people who have made Dallas-Fort Worth such a powerful economic force.
Honorees shared professional and personal advice, challenges they have had to overcome in their lives and careers, hobbies, bucket list goals, and other fun facts.
Boone, co-founder and partner, has had many proud moments in his career building a firm from what was once a two-person shop to having more than 575 lawyers in 16 offices around the world. Amongst his accomplishments, Boone says the one that stands out is “successfully completing his term as chairman of the SMU Board of Trustees.” The firm’s toughest challenge is that the “legal industry remains highly competitive, particularly in Dallas,” he said, but he believes that the firm’s global work will expand.
Powers remembers his first job working at a “gas station in 1973, right at the start of the Arab oil embargo.” He looks forward to the firm’s upcoming 50th anniversary in 2020, saying, “We are excited to celebrate this milestone in what has been a truly remarkable history.” The toughest challenge of his role at the firm is continuing to “find ways to improve and expand the services we provide to clients,” Powers said.
Goodman, a partner and co-chair of the firm’s Trade Secrets Practice Group, says she knew she wanted to pursue a career as a lawyer after “watching Perry Mason with her dad” at 10 years old. Growing up on a farm, Goodman was no stranger to hard work, saying “lawyers work hard, but farmers work harder.” The projects she has “worked on this past year have been some of the most complex, challenging and rewarding” of her career, she said.
Described as a “busy guy,” Partner Jeff Dorrill spends “60-plus hours a week practicing law and 25 hours training and racing in triathlons and marathons.” When asked what is the biggest challenge facing the firm, Dorrill emphasized the importance of “offering a work environment that is stimulating, rewarding, diverse and caring” in order to attract and retain talent. He says that what excites him about the future of the firm is that its “young attorneys are on fire – they are creative, motivated and wonderful communicators and project leaders.”
The 2019 issue of D CEO Magazine’s Dallas 500 was distributed in November.