Hall Estill is an American law firm headquartered in Tulsa, Oklahoma with additional offices in Oklahoma City, Northwest Arkansas, Nashville, Tennessee, Denver, Colorado, and Portland, Oregon. Hall Estill ranks among the 400 largest U.S. law firms by domestic attorney headcount. In 2015, Law360 recognized Hall Estill for having the fourth-highest percentage of minority partners among America's large and mid-size law firms and named the firm as one of the "50 Best Firms for Minority Partners." Hall Estill is currently headquartered in the 320 South Boston Building in downtown Tulsa.
History
In 1966, Harvard Law School graduate Walter Hall founded the firm now known as Hall Estill in response to a request for outside counsel made by the Tulsa-based Williams Companies. In 1980, Hall Estill attorneys represented defendant Worldwide Volkswagen in the landmark personal jurisdiction case World-Wide Volkswagen Corp v. Woodson, which was ultimately decided in the defendant's favor by the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1996, Hall Estill partner Judith Colbert became the first minority woman partner of a large law firm in Oklahoma history. In 2010, Hall Estill attorneys successfully defended noted author John Grisham in claims arising from his book , later turned into a Netflix documentary series. In 2014, Hall Estill represented country music singerGarth Brooks in a highly-publicized lawsuit in which Brooks challenged an Oklahoma hospital's use of what the court deemed to be a restricted donation. In 2017, political scientist Adam Feldman identified Hall Estill as one of the four law firms that had appeared most frequently in front of recently-appointed U.S. Supreme Justice Neil Gorsuch during his time on the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.
Growth and expansion
Hall Estill opened its second office in 1986 in Oklahoma City. In 1997, Hall Estill opened its first Northwest Arkansas office in Fayetteville, Arkansas, staffed with attorneys lured away from the Rose Law Firm. In 2015, Hall Estill opened a Nashville office. The next year, Hall Estill opened its Denver office, initially focusing on oil and gas and transactional work. Hall Estill has on occasion grown through mergers and acquisitions. In 2000, Hall Estill acquired Nichols Wolfe, a Tulsa corporate law firm founded in 1965. In 2018, Tulsa corporate and litigation law firm Newton, O'Connor, Turner & Ketchum merged with the larger Hall Estill.
Edward L. Weidenfeld, former member of the Council for the Administrative Conference of the United States and counsel to the Reagan-Bush Campaign; also served as U.S. counsel for the government of South Africa after Nelson Mandela's election
