For Texas Lawyers: Co-Counsel and Referral Information

If you're a Texas lawyer and an oilfield case has landed on your desk, you already know it isn't a standard injury file. Chapter 95 is waiting. There's a Master Service Agreement you haven't seen yet. There are five companies on the site and only one of them is easy to find. This page is about what to do with that.

Some lawyers want to refer the case out and be done with it. Others want to keep their hand in, stay close to the client, and bring in a trial partner who lives in this area of the law. Both work. This page explains how the association works, what the team brings, and how the fee is divided under the rules, so you can decide which fits you and your client.

Guy Muller handles oilfield injury and wrongful-death cases in association with The Stewart Law Firm, PLLC, of Austin. The arrangement follows Texas Disciplinary Rule of Professional Conduct 1.04, in writing, with the client's informed consent. The first conversation is confidential and costs nothing.

Who this page is for

You don't have to handle oilfield cases for a living to end up holding one. A roughneck's wife is your client's cousin. A wrongful-death call comes in and the family lives two counties over. You took the case because they trusted you, and now you're staring at a file that fights back harder than anything on your desk.

These cases are expensive to work and built to be defended. The operator and its contractors carry insurance with lawyers already on retainer, and those lawyers go to work fast, often before the worker is out of the hospital. The evidence that decides the case (the daily drilling reports, the JSA, the equipment, the Master Service Agreement) sits in the hands of the companies you'll be suing. Experts cost real money up front, and you may need several. A solo or small firm can absolutely win one of these. But it's hard to do it alone, and it's harder to do it part-time.

That's the gap this page is about. If you've got a strong oilfield case and you'd rather have a trial partner than carry the whole load yourself, there's a straightforward way to do it.

The co-counsel model and the Stewart Law Firm association

When two lawyers from different firms work the same case for the same client, Texas calls that an association, and the lawyers are co-counsel. It's an everyday arrangement, and the rules that govern it are clear once you've seen them.

Guy Muller handles oilfield cases in association with The Stewart Law Firm, PLLC, in Austin. The point of the association is depth. Oilfield injury and death cases reward lawyers who already know the statute, the contracts, and the way the companies on a site point at each other, and who have stood in front of a jury with that material before.

What the team brings to an oilfield case

Stephen W. Stewart founded The Stewart Law Firm in Austin and has been licensed in Texas since 1997. His practice is catastrophic personal injury, wrongful death, and defective products, and that work includes oilfield and industrial injury cases. Before he started representing injured people, he spent years on the other side, defending product-liability claims for large manufacturers. He has seen how the defense builds these cases, which is useful when you're the one taking them apart.

A note on my own background, since referring lawyers ask. Before I started my firm, I worked in-house as corporate counsel, first as Associate General Counsel for an AR/VR and SaaS technology company, then as General Counsel for a global publishing company. A large part of that job was drafting and negotiating service contracts, indemnity provisions, and insurance requirements. Different industries, same contractual architecture. When a Texas court reads a Master Service Agreement and asks whether one company "expressly" agreed to cover another's negligence, or whether the indemnity language was conspicuous enough to hold up, it's reading the kind of language I used to write. I'm not going to tell you I drafted oilfield contracts. I'll tell you I know how that machinery is built and where it tends to get sloppy when a real person gets hurt.

What that combination means for your file is simple. Somebody on the team has tried this kind of case, and somebody on the team can read the contract that often decides it. The substantive ground is covered in the public guide, including what Chapter 95 actually requires and the rest of the South Texas Oilfield Injury Guide.

How a referral or co-counsel arrangement works

It starts with a phone call. We run a conflicts check, you tell me what you have, and we look at it together. If it isn't a fit, I'll say so and tell you why. If it is, we put the arrangement in writing and get the client's written consent before anything moves, which is what Rule 1.04 requires.

From there, you choose how involved you want to be.

You can refer the matter and stay informed without carrying the day-to-day. Or you can stay on as co-counsel and assume joint responsibility for the representation, which keeps you in the loop on the work and the decisions. Rule 1.04 builds that second path out in its comments: a lawyer who assumes joint responsibility is expected to make reasonable efforts to see that the representation is adequate, to refer the matter to a lawyer competent to handle it, to stay reasonably informed as the case moves, and to make sure the client's questions get answered. You don't have to attend every deposition or sit in on every hearing to meet that standard, but you do have to stay genuinely connected to the case.

The team carries the financial weight that makes these cases possible: the case expenses, the experts, the cost of prying evidence out of the companies that are holding it. Your client keeps you as the lawyer they already trust, and gains a trial firm that has done this work.

If you want a sense of the substance before you call, two attorney references on this site show the kind of material these cases run on: the Texas Oilfield Discovery Reference, a topic list of what to ask for and where the evidence hides, and the Texas Oilfield Case Law Tracker, which follows the decisions that move this area.

Fee division under Rule 1.04

This is the part referring lawyers want pinned down, so here it is in plain terms.

Texas Disciplinary Rule of Professional Conduct 1.04(f) governs how lawyers who aren't in the same firm divide a fee. It allows the division only if three things are true. First, the split is either in proportion to the work each lawyer performs, or it's made between lawyers who assume joint responsibility for the representation. Second, the client consents in writing to the terms before the association or referral happens, and that written consent has to spell out who's participating, whether the division is by proportion of work or by joint responsibility, and the share each lawyer or firm will receive (or the basis for figuring it). Third, the total fee still has to be reasonable, not unconscionable, under Rule 1.04(a).

There's a companion provision worth knowing. Rule 1.04(g) says an agreement that lets one lawyer bring in or refer to a lawyer at a different firm has to be confirmed in the way (f) describes. A client's consent given without knowing the (f)(2) terms doesn't count as confirmation. And if the agreement isn't confirmed the right way, a lawyer can't collect the agreed fee, only the reasonable value of services actually provided and the reasonable expenses actually incurred. Texas also requires, by statute, that a contingent-fee contract be in writing and signed by the client and the attorney, under Section 82.065 of the Government Code. The takeaway for a referring lawyer is that the disclosure and the signatures aren't a formality you clean up later. They're the thing that makes the fee enforceable.

The team handles this paperwork as a matter of course. You won't be left to draft it.

How to start a conversation

Call or text (210) 460-0569, or email guy@guymullerlaw.com. A first call usually takes fifteen or twenty minutes. It helps to have the basics in front of you: who was hurt and how, who they worked for, which companies were on the site, and any deadline you're watching, since limitations and notice issues can move fast in these cases. You don't need a worked-up file. A clear picture is enough to tell whether it's worth a closer look.

The conversation is confidential, and your client's information is protected under Rule 1.05. Talking through a case doesn't commit you or your client to anything. If we go forward, we paper the association and get the client's written consent. If we don't, you've lost nothing but the time of a phone call, and you'll have a straight answer about what you're holding.

Common questions