Sullivan & Cromwell Takes Houston Plunge With New Office (1)

Wall Street’s Sullivan & Cromwell is preparing to open an office in Houston, the latest elite corporate law firm to target the city, according to three people familiar with the situation.

The firm hired Patrick Lingwall, a junior partner at Kirkland & Ellis who is expected to start at S&C later this month, the people said. It also obtained temporary office space in downtown Houston’s Texas Tower. Sullivan & Cromwell did not immediately respond to a comment request.

The firm is known as a corporate law heavyweight, representing Credit Suisse and SoftBank, among others. Its lawyers more recently took on President Donald Trump as a client and strengthened ties to Elon Musk through work for Tesla and xAI.

Sullivan & Cromwell enters a competitive and increasingly crowded market for legal work in the US energy capital, which has seen an influx of large corporate law firms over the last decade. Firms are jostling for work on overlapping energy and artificial intelligence projects.

Lingwall is set to jump from Kirkland just five months after being elevated to partner at the corporate behemoth. The University of Texas graduate focuses on acquisitions, divestitures, joint venture formations, and other commercial matters for companies in the upstream and midstream energy sector, according to the firm’s website.

“We wish Patrick well in his new role,” a Kirkland spokesperson said via email.

It is unclear whether Sullivan & Cromwell is actively hiring more local lawyers. “Several” of the firm’s attorneys are licensed to practice in Texas or are in the process of obtaining a license, according to a person familiar with the situation.

The firm’s temporary space is in the same building that houses Vinson & Elkins, Clifford Chance, and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, among others. Kirkland and Latham & Watkins, the two largest US law firms by gross revenue, have been among the most successful “out of town” firms to crop up in Houston. Paul Weiss, another prominent Manhattan firm, struck out in a 2024 bid to woo Houston corporate lawyers from rivals to launch an office in the city.

_{Podcast: ‘Dirt Lawyers’ to Megadeals: How Houston Became Big Law Hot Spot}

The nearly 150-year-old Sullivan & Cromwell made headlines last year for representing Trump in an appeal of his criminal conviction for hiding a $130,000 payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels. S&C in May 2025 advised Musk on the merger of his California-based artificial intelligence startup xAI and the Austin area-headquartered X, formerly Twitter. Its lawyers last month convinced a Delaware court to reinstate Musk’s massive pay package at Tesla, following a yearslong battle involving the Texas electric-vehicle maker.

Sullivan & Cromwell’s newly created Digital Infrastructure Practice group is already doing work in Texas, a spokesperson said earlier this week.

The firm announced the formation of the digital group on Dec. 15, describing how it brought together lawyers from numerous practice areas to collaborate on “energy project development, GPU and system financing, hyperscale data center development, leasing agreements, compute off take, debt and equity financings and joint ventures.”

“Digital infrastructure is among today’s most consequential business sectors,” said Sullivan & Cromwell co-chairs Robert Giuffra and Scott Miller said then in the statement. “We have formalized this practice to ensure that our clients have access to the full range of our expertise across practice areas and geographies, as they lead in shaping the future of digital connectivity.”