In an interview with Invest: Houston, Ricardo Garcia-Moreno, managing partner of Haynes Boone’s Houston office, shared his insights on Houston’s evolving business landscape, cross-border opportunities and the Haynes Boone’s approach to delivering full-service legal support in Houston’s growing and business-friendly environment.
Read an excerpt below.
How would you describe the business environment in Houston and its impact on your firm and clients?
2025 was one of the busiest and most successful years in our firm’s 55-year history, and that momentum has carried forward into 2026. The Houston market remains exceptionally vibrant, with robust activity across a wide range of industries. We are seeing foreign-based companies entering Texas and choosing Houston as their base of operations, alongside locally headquartered companies expanding both domestically and internationally.
I agree with Mayor John Whitmire’s public statements that Houston is open for business, but I would take that a step further to say that the entire state of Texas is open for business. The state has made significant strides in creating a favorable business environment. For example, there is no state income tax, we have established specialized business courts to handle complex, high-dollar litigation, the Texas Stock Exchange has opened in Dallas, and there have been meaningful updates to our corporate statutes that promote strong corporate governance standards for commercial entities, including public companies. Houston benefits from all of this.
Houston is a major global trading hub with a GDP that would rank among the largest economies in the world if it were an independent country. The region has a deep and diversified energy industry spanning upstream oil and gas, midstream, downstream, renewables, commodities, oilfield services, and emerging technologies, such as carbon capture and geothermal power. Beyond energy, Houston offers world-class infrastructure, including one of the largest ports in the United States, major international airports, and the Texas Medical Center. These factors collectively create significant commercial opportunities for our clients and for new market entrants, and they keep us busy.
How have client expectations evolved, and how are you responding to those changes?
Client expectations have always been demanding because clients themselves are under significant pressure to deliver results for their stakeholders—whether that means closing a transaction quickly, achieving a favorable litigation outcome, or meeting revenue targets. They understandably expect fast response times, strategic and practical insight, and cost-efficient solutions from their legal advisors. Technology has played a major role in shaping those expectations, as communications are now instantaneous and constant. When I started practicing over 32 years ago, we relied on faxes and FedEx to get documents from one party to another. Now you press a button and those same documents arrive around the world in seconds. Advances in artificial intelligence will continue to reshape how we practice law.
We focus on being highly responsive and pride ourselves on understanding our clients’ businesses in depth, which allows us to provide practical, cost-efficient solutions. But clients are not simply looking for legal answers—they want strategic thinkers who can anticipate future challenges and opportunities for their businesses. We are adopting the latest technologies to support those efforts.
What are your top priorities for the Houston office over the next few years?
Our primary focus is always on our clients and making sure we continue to provide them with the highest level of service. To achieve that, we plan to grow strategically by adding great talent at all levels, whether it be our staff, entry-level associates, or experienced lateral partners, to continue strengthening our existing practices and expanding into new practice areas.
We are also focused on staying ahead of trends that matter to our clients. For example, we have established a Venezuela Taskforce to support clients exploring opportunities across various industries in that country, as well as a multidisciplinary Data Center practice to address the surge in demand in that space.
In addition, we have developed programs such as our Crisis Management Academy, which brings together lawyers from multiple disciplines to help clients prepare for and respond to unexpected events, and our Trial Academy, which is designed to sharpen advocacy skills and prepare our litigators for trial. These are just two examples of initiatives that reflect our commitment to anticipating client needs and providing proactive solutions.
To read the full article from Invest: Houston, click here.
