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Oklahoma Law Firms Benefit from State’s Oil-and-Gas Economy

By Debra Cassens Weiss

June 18, 2008, 1:30 pm CDT

Oklahoma’s oil-and-gas driven economy is good news for the state’s law firms, which report they aren’t experiencing the kind of downturn that is hitting lawyers elsewhere.

Among the firms reporting healthy work opportunities were McAfee and Taft, Hartzog Conger, Crowe and Dunlevy, and Phillips McFall, the Journal Record reports.

Tom Wolfe, president and managing partner of Phillips McFall, told the publication his firm has added 10 lawyers and 10 paralegals over the past year. He said the state’s healthy oil and gas industry is a boon. “I think law firms are benefiting from that, particularly on the business side,” he said.

Agreeing with that assessment is Richard Nix, managing director at McAfee and Taft, which hired its largest group of summer associates this year. Oklahoma struggled in the 1980s and 1990s, but “it’s our time right now,” Nix told the Journal Record. “We’re really posing ourselves for additional growth, because we think the clients in this community continue to be very optimistic.”