Lance Glinn:

Welcome in to another episode of the Inside the ICE House podcast. Today's guest is Keith Fullenweider. He is the chairman of global law firm, Vinson Elkins. Keith, thanks so much for joining us Inside the ICE House. Happy to have you here.

Keith Fullenweider:

Hey, Lance, thank you for having me. Great to be with you this morning.

Lance Glinn:

So, Keith, as we are here at the NYSE, I want to start with the summer 2025 launch of NYSE Texas. Now, this was the first securities exchange, obviously open in the Lone Star state where Vinson & Elkins is obviously headquartered. When you look at this new exchange, planting roots, providing Texas with major financial market infrastructure, what do you think it means just for the broader business ecosystem as a whole?

Keith Fullenweider:

I think the Texas NYSE is just symbolic of what's going on across the Texas business community right now. Obviously, New York's the financial center of the world and will be, but Texas is increasingly an important financial center. And there's a lot of factors that really are driving that. Obviously, a lot of businesses have just found Texas to be a very friendly environment. I mean, low taxes, great place for your employees to live, lower cost of housing, just a very overall favorable environment. And I think particularly in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, we've witnessed a lot of financial institutions moving in a big way into that market.

Our building in Dallas, we share it with Goldman Sachs, and I say share. I use that term lightly because about 60% of the people in the building are employees of Goldman Sachs. We have a number of floors in the building, but Goldman definitely dominates the population of the building. Morgan Stanley's a giant employer in Dallas. So, financial institutions moving to Dallas, the importance of Dallas as a sort of banking hub, finance hub for the state. I think we're at the beginning of that trend and I think it's only going to continue.

Lance Glinn:

In Dallas where NYSC Texas headquarters will be located, of course. And obviously, the sprouting of NYC Texas in the state certainly shines a light on how the Texas business landscape has matured over the years. But what to you does it say about where it's going and what the future holds for the landscape?

Keith Fullenweider:

Texas, probably like California was originally known for one industry, right? We were thought of as the energy state and for good reason, great energy companies like ExxonMobil headquartered in Texas. But the Texas economy has really outgrown the energy industry, the dominance that existed when I was a young professional. So, now it's finance and it's consumer goods and it's manufacturing, it's defense, it's retail. It's really all aspects of the economy. And I think over the last five or six years, you've seen some of the major tech businesses actually relocate from California to Texas. So, every industry has reasons to be in Texas. There's really nothing unique about its natural resources anymore.

That's always going to be a big driver of our economy, but frankly, there's just so much more going on in Texas. And it's an exciting place to be a professional because it'll take time, but over time, those organizations will build connections with professionals who live in the state. That will take 10, 15 years, take a generation perhaps professionally. But over time, it's really pretty exciting.

Lance Glinn:

And part of moving to a state, you need to make sure if you're a company, that the state can provide the resources that you need to obviously be successful. And part of that resource or part of those resources needed is obviously the talent. What does that say about the talent that Texas possesses throughout all of its different 4-year institutions, trade schools, whatever it may be? What does it say about the talent that is in the state of Texas that all these companies find it so attractive?

Keith Fullenweider:

I think talent comes from two sources. It comes organically and it comes from immigration, from lateral movement into the state. So, there is a great university system. I'm a graduate of University of Texas law school. I'm a big fan of the University of Texas system. I think it produces some incredible talent that definitely helps populate the state as do schools like Rice and SMU.

Lance Glinn:

True.

Keith Fullenweider:

But there's a tremendous migration of talent into Texas, and there really always has been. If you go to the University of Texas in Austin, or if you walk around MD Anderson in Houston, the Great Cancer Hospital, or UT Southwestern in Dallas, or spend time with Gerald Hines or Trammell Crow, big real estate businesses that have grown up in Houston and Dallas, you really will meet talent from all over the world. And that frankly, as a guy who grew up in Houston, was really what attracted me to Vinson & Elkins, our firm, is that when I went there to interview, I met very few people who had grown up in the same city that I had, even though I was interviewing in town where I'd grown up.

I met people from all over the country, all over the world. And I think that really, that openness, that friendliness of Texas, people repeatedly will say, "Hey, I moved to Texas. I really didn't think the weather was going to be that great and it's not, but wow, the people are just, they're very open. They're very welcoming." It's a little bit of the culture of the place. And it takes a lot more than that to attract talent, but I think it helps retain talent once it lands there.

Lance Glinn:

And we're going to get to more on Vinson & Elkins in just a little bit, but I do want to bring up recent news that came out about ExxonMobil.

Keith Fullenweider:

Sure.

Lance Glinn:

And now that company, we talked obviously about companies coming from other states and moving to Texas, ExxonMobil doing that, I believe from New Jersey to Texas, my home state of New Jersey. So, we in the garden state taken a little bit of a hit. But nevertheless, what does that signal to you that a company in an oil industry, in an energy industry that's that prominent moving to the Lone Star state?

Keith Fullenweider:

Yeah. People were probably surprised to see that Exxon was incorporated in New Jersey. I think it goes back to standard oil of New Jersey or something like that a long, long time ago. I think Exxon, I think you have to follow what they said in their own announcement about the move, which is they really had been headquartered and their operations have been based in Texas since the late '80s. They found the improvements in the Texas corporations code, the creation of the business courts in Texas over the last couple of years as things that they believed would give them greater stability, protect them from frivolous litigation.

Now there are some electoral elements of the Texas reincorporation that you can elect or not elect. They've decided not to elect those according to their press release. So, they're not trying to stymie shareholder rights and they were very clear about that. But I think that they believe that the codification of the business judgment rule and the Texas Business Code is valuable. And some of the Texas procedural elements around derivatives litigation will be valuable and really will just protect their shareholder base from things that are kind of a waste of time or frivolous.

Lance Glinn:

And I think a huge part of Texas's transformation across industries, because you mentioned Texas known for energy and obviously has diversified over the years, but I think a huge part of that transformation has been the emergence of tech and tech companies and these startups. Obviously, they all see Texas or a lot of them see Texas as a great place to get started or a great place to potentially move to. How has the evolution of tech, its capabilities and the tech sector writ large helped shape the current day, Texas business landscape?

Keith Fullenweider:

Well, it's interesting. The energy business is a tech business, right? I mean, it's full of engineers. The dominant professional group working in the energy business as I was growing up in Texas are engineers, and now we're attracting software engineers into places like Austin and also to Houston and Dallas. The medical community is massive in all three of those cities. Big new medical school in Austin started in the last 10 years, the Dell University Medical Center. So, technical backgrounds are something that are very common in the Texas economy.

And I think what's the part of tech that you're talking about obviously is the part that's moving from California to Texas, but it's a natural environment for people who are highly educated, value the things that highly educated people value, want strong schools and great educational opportunities for their families. And so, I think other than giving up the good weather, there's a lot of benefits to tech engineers relocating to Texas. And it's a pretty natural thing, actually, if you've lived there for a long time.

Lance Glinn:

Law firms I think can get stuck in legacy thinking, especially those with the heritage and history that a firm like V and E has. How have you and other leaders really just enabled the firm to evolve without losing the DNA that has obviously made it what it is today? It's an over a 100-year-old firm, one that is incredibly diversified, touches a number of different sectors. But again, to make sure it doesn't get stuck in that legacy thinking, how do you make sure that No,

Keith Fullenweider:

That's a great question, Lance. I mean, law firms have brands, right? Every professional service firm has a brand and your brand can be your friend or your brand can be something that holds you back. We really have tried to make sure that our brand is something that we build on every year. We don't take for granted. We don't rest on our laurels and we don't let it limit us. So, starting in Texas, we had a great front row seat at the US energy economy as it developed way before my time, but it's been a great place to be in a great industry to be associated with. But it also gave us an opportunity to represent a lot of NYSC listed companies.

When I was a young lawyer, that was really taking off in the firm, our capital markets practice, our public company practice, IPOs were a huge part of our history. And Wall Street became very comfortable that Vinson & Elkins lawyers were excellent at taking companies public. They were great sources of advice on disclosure. They understood the securities rules as well as lawyers in any part of the country. So, that was a big part of our growth in my early years. Over the last 20 years, we've really focused in addition to that, and it's still important to us, we really focused on private equity. And again, we sort of used our brand, which I think really is a symbol for a lot of industry knowledge.

So, I mean, the reason we have the brand we do around energy, around infrastructure, around power is that our partners, when they get called, they perform a daily basis. Your brand only lasts if you're as good as your brand. And when you call our partners and you ask them questions about what is the FERC going to do on interconnection politics with PJM, or you ask one of our regulatory lawyers what's going to happen in Austin with data center, large load interconnect. When you ask those questions, you get incredibly thoughtful answers.

And so, we continue to live up to our brand because our people are very good and they're proud of their industry knowledge and people come to us for that industry knowledge. Now our job is to take that industry knowledge and those initial touchpoints and turn it into more. And we've really done that in the private equity space. Today, we represent majority of the large sponsors across the globe. We do work for them that goes way beyond energy and power and we're very proud of those roots, but we've really realized that our job is to do more with that, not just rest on those laurels.

Lance Glinn:

And so, you speak about the brand and you speak about this tie of Vinson & Elkins to energy, to infrastructure. And obviously, that dates back towards the beginnings of the firm more than a hundred years ago. But the firm, again, has diversified over the years, has continued to grow as you obviously just spoke to. How intentional has that diversification been? How intentional has it been to remain still a leader in energy and an infrastructure, but also branch out to something like private equity like you just spoke to?

Keith Fullenweider:

Yeah, no, it's been very intentional. We've been in London for 50 plus years. We went there originally for energy in the North Sea, but that is an ancient memory, right?

Lance Glinn:

Sure.

Keith Fullenweider:

Really, it's what do you do now that you're in London? We worked on a project. I was talking to a partner in London yesterday about a project in Turkey. So, we have projects going in the Middle East. We're obviously keeping up with what's going on, geopolitical situation there. But New York is our second-largest office now after Houston. So, our growth outside of Texas has been very intentional. The key for us has been to do it without losing a focus on Texas. And the two really-

Lance Glinn:

How hard is that?

Keith Fullenweider:

... they really compliment each other. They don't compete with each other. So, our culture is one that's very collaborative. We've really not let geography become power centers within the law firm. We really want practices to work together across offices. And so, our partners in Dallas are happy about our success in New York and our partners in Houston are happy about our success in London and vice versa. So, we do that by working on teams across offices. And so, we do a lot of work for Apollo or for Blackstone. You'll never see a transaction that's staffed by lawyers all in one office.

Lance Glinn:

Sure.

Keith Fullenweider:

That's just not how we do things. And that really brings the firm together. And at the same time, it's super important to have boots on the ground where those clients live. And so, it's important for us to have lawyers in New York. It's important for us to have lawyers in Houston and Dallas, London, Washington, places like that, because that's where the clients are. And you want to build personal relationships with your clients. You want to build trust. That's where it comes from. And running into people at school, running into people at soccer matches, that's a natural part of how professional relationships evolve and get stronger.

And we want to have people in the right cities where those things can kind of happen naturally.

Lance Glinn:

And so, you talk about this interconnectedness between different locations of the firm, right? New York, London, Texas, obviously, among many other locations across the globe. How do you manage sort of these 700 lawyers that you have in the firm? Because there is an interconnectedness, and obviously the technology has made it so much more easier to communicate than ever before, but to really have to balance all of these different locations, all these different people, obviously you have people under you that you delegate to and that oversee different areas.

But to be leading this global firm, what is the challenge of really managing it and making sure that nobody gets complacent and that there's constant growth and evolution and a push to be better and continue to succeed?

Keith Fullenweider:

Yeah. Well, I think at an initial level, you have to be with people and build relationships in person. So, there's a lot of travel involved. You have to go sit and break bread and spend time and get to know people personally. And that has to happen face-to-face. Once you've built relationships with people, people I've known for many years, it's very easy to communicate over Zoom or over the phone and kind of keep in touch in between personal visits. So, technology has made things easier, but you got to start with a personal relationship, no question about it.

And I think a lot of it for us is making sure that we approach things with the right mindset, which is that people believe that they're going to get better and continue to develop, that they might have certain traits, certain personality characteristics, certain capabilities that got them to a certain place, but that they should never stop learning. When you sort of get static and you decide that you're in a place that you're good, you're done, you're set, I think that's a warning sign, right? And you really don't want your partners or your colleagues to ever get to that place. You want them to continue to be looking for ways. So, you got to set the example of that yourself.

You got to admit your mistakes, talk about those openly, talk about how you approach problems and how you think about things. And really, at the end of the day, what you're trying to do is encourage people to continue their growth journey themselves and do it in a way that's as collaborative as possible. Because I do believe, and I think a lot of my partners believe that we grow faster together. We don't grow as quickly, as efficiently as individuals. When we put the focus on ourselves and our own success, it's really a burden and it really kind of weighs you down and kind of holds you back.

I mean, you had Jon Gray in here from Blackstone a few months ago, and I think Jon did a great job of talking about that and how they work at Blackstone as a community, as teams, as how important that is, that their mutual success is something that they're all championing. And I think that's very much the case with our firm.

Lance Glinn:

Yeah. Jon talked a lot about the different ways that they communicate, as you said, with obviously a global firm as well with thousands of employees, thousands of different offices. And it seems like based off of what you were saying, there has to be some level of authenticity, right? There has to be some level of accountability as well because if you yourself aren't accountable and the people under you aren't accountable and authentic too, then those people that are boots on the ground, those of the 700 lawyers that you have in your firm, they're not naive.

They'll notice and they'll realize that, hey, Keith Fullenweider, he's not being accountable, he's not being authentic. So, it has to be a top-down leadership.

Keith Fullenweider:

Yeah. And if you've known people for 20 years and you really know each other, you can have a bad day and people know you, right? But when you're really talking about your newer lawyers, all of our associates and counsel, they may not know me personally. And so, in particularly their generation, they want authenticity, they want sincerity, and that's very, very important to them. And I'm very, very comfortable with that. And I think being able to stand up and talk to our younger lawyers about... Right now, the big topic is AI. And frankly, they're scared. They're scared like, "Are you going to need us? Are you going to keep hiring associates?

Are you going to keep promoting associates or associates can be replaced by AI?" I think you'd be willing to have those conversations, be sincere and thoughtful about it, and really spend the time thinking about those issues so that you'll... Because if it's canned or it's too quick, they won't believe you and...

Speaker 3:

If it's too rehearsed.

Keith Fullenweider:

Yeah, if it's too rehearsed, exactly.

Lance Glinn:

And so, let's touch on AI now that we bring it up. And you mentioned obviously we had Jon Gray on and he spoke a lot about Blackstone and what they're doing with AI and where they see where they want to invest in AI. And one thing that he specifically talked about was not necessarily the technology itself, but the infrastructure behind the technology, and that is an area and a focus of his firm moving forward. So, to me, that was a sign that the next wave of tech may be sort of the underlying backbone that obviously powers all of these different platforms that have become almost part of our everyday lives.

Where do you see the biggest opportunities with AI and the opportunities that come, not necessarily with the technology, but with the infrastructure and the backbone that's powering all that technology?

Keith Fullenweider:

Sure. Yeah. Vinson & Elkins was made for an industry, you would look at the AI boom that's going on right now. I mean, it is placed all of our strengths. It's what we do. It's what we've been doing for a long time. I mean, you start with project development and project finance. So, at the end of the day, these are large industrial projects. They become larger and larger. Five years ago, data centers were a hundred megawatts and not that complicated. And you just plugged into the grid and hey, no big deal. Those days are long gone.

So, what really plays in our advantage is that we have power development, project finance partners, energy regulatory partners, people have been used to financing and getting built these large complexes, because at the end of the day, the real issue today is power. Everybody's talking about that. Jon talked about that. Everybody knows that that's the really big issue. What does that mean, right? It means that you're going to need more of all kinds of power.

Lance Glinn:

Sure.

Keith Fullenweider:

We have a big renewables business. Solar is going to power a lot of the data center build that's going on right now. You're going to need more conventional natural gas. You're going to need nuclear to expand at certain points in time. We're working on projects across all three of those industries, and there's a tremendous complexity to the effect this has on the grid. And that's something that you do have to be a bit of an engineer to understand how the flows of power work and how interconnections are quite so complicated. And there's plenty of data center developers who are getting kind of frustrated that can't get plugged into the grid.

But when you throw that much power into a pretty aging infrastructure system, our transmission system, it is super complicated. And transmission's an area where Texas has a real advantage over the rest of the country. It's been very hard to build transmission outside of Texas. Texas is noticeable exception to that. Our PUC has been very pro transmission development over the last decade, and I think that's really playing into our hands right now and been a very, very good thing for the state. But ultimately, every data center can't be in Texas and you're going to need more transmission, more transmission capability, more behind the meter power across the country.

But this really is a practice, an area where V and E is very well positioned to help clients with the issues that really matter.

Lance Glinn:

So, Keith, I look at AI, not necessarily just as an industry, but as a layer embedded into all industries, it's really obviously disrupting everything that we do. As you talk to clients, leaders of sectors, even your own people at V and E, how is AI really impacting and disrupting the legal industry?

Keith Fullenweider:

On the legal side, I've got half a dozen partners who are really cranking out deals or working on serious litigation matters, call it younger partners who really have their hands on the documents and the papers and seeing how things are being produced and negotiated right now. And I'll talk to them every couple months and ask them what's going on. I've noticed a very dramatic change just in the last three months in the answers I get from them. The new products, particularly the new version of Claude, is fantastic for lawyers. It is enabling them to do things that took a day and an hour.

And they're taking that extra time and they're using it to benefit their clients by doing more work, by being more thoughtful, by doing better work than you previously had time to do, or the clients wanted to pay for. So, I'm sure clients want to know that you've looked at all the precedent in this area and have come up with the very best approach to these issues, but there's always been time limits on that in the past. And really now, the time limits are gone. You can literally look at everything your firm has done on this topic over the last five years. And in a matter of minutes, be able to harvest that and synthesize that and see, okay, what's the right approach to this issue for this transaction?

So, I think it is going to make the work that comes out of law firms better. I think all law firms are going to have access to AI. I think the tools are going to be ubiquitous. They're going to be everywhere, and it's not going to be a matter of who competes. There's a lot of talk in the legal industry right now about who's going to be the best at AI, who's going to win with AI. I think that kind of misses the point. I think all lawyers are going to have access to AI. They're all going to have access to the speed.

So, what AI is really going to do in the legal industry is it's going to reemphasize the qualities that I think increasingly have mattered over the last decade, but are now are going to matter even more, which is judgment, character, the ability to build trust. Can you win friends and influence people? Can you build relationships naturally with people? That's what's really going to matter in the AI world for lawyers, because it's frankly going to get easier to learn, easier to be trained. You're not going to be at a disadvantage if you are in a secondary market. You're going to be able to access all the same information that lawyers in New York or Houston can access.

Lance Glinn:

And how is Vinson & Elkins really prepping your own lawyers with the technologies? Because it's one thing to have the technology at your fingertip, a whole nother thing to then use that technology the right way to benefit you in the best way possible. So, how is V and E making sure that that's the case for its lawyers?

Keith Fullenweider:

Yeah. My answer on that might be different from other law firm leaders. I think that has to happen organically. It has to happen bottom up. I don't think it's a top down thing at all. I think if you're a finance lawyer and you know how to produce or respond to comments on a loan agreement, you're going to use AI and you're going to talk to your colleagues about how you do that. And by your colleagues, I mean the people working on the same kind of work and the same kind of matters and the senior associates and the council and the young partners are going to figure it out. That's actually how AI is evolving within our firm.

And my guess is it's actually the way it's evolving in lots of law firms. Other law firm leaders may talk about some great AI strategy.

Lance Glinn:

Sure.

Keith Fullenweider:

I actually think it happens organically and happens bottom up. So, our job at the top is to make sure the tools are available to the lawyers. We have the right licenses, we have the right products, we keep up with the products. Our chief innovation officer and chief technology officers do a great job of that and are very on top of what's going on. So, there's a function for the C-suite of a law firm to make sure that they're keeping up and our folks do a fantastic job of that. The other part of this is kind of your data management. And I think this is an issue that all businesses trying to use AI are facing. Law firms are just one example of that. And our data are documents.

So, maybe a little bit easier for us than for other businesses, but a key aspect of this, and our chief technology officer really explained this to me a couple years ago and it made sense to me how organized you are with your data is really going to drive how effectively you can apply AI to it. So, I think you're seeing a tremendous amount of spending going on in industry right now kind of getting ready to run AI on your data. And fortunately, I think for law firms, that's probably not as expensive as it might be for other businesses because at the end of the day, it's all on email, it's all in various document management systems.

It's there, it's manageable. And so, it hasn't for us required a tremendous amount of spending. It's just required some habit changing, some things like that.

Lance Glinn:

Sure. Yeah. I think in a law firm, documents even prior to AI, we're nicely organized to make sure that everything that needs to be found from years ago was able to...

Keith Fullenweider:

You would hope so. Yeah, exactly.

Lance Glinn:

Exactly. Now...

Keith Fullenweider:

So, it's Email changed that a little bit, but...

Lance Glinn:

Sure. Sure, sure, sure, sure.

Keith Fullenweider:

It's all there somewhere.

Lance Glinn:

Threads and threads of email chains. So, it seems like you say that you believe it's more of an organic approach to really use these tools effectively.

Keith Fullenweider:

I do.

Lance Glinn:

So, for you, is it more obviously equipping your people with the tools first and foremost, making sure they have access to it. But then second, it really is more just encouragement, for lack of a better term?

Keith Fullenweider:

It's encouragement. It's also telling stories. So, we have a monthly partners meeting, and last month we devoted the whole meeting to AI, right? And so, how do we do it? We had six lawyers, some associates, counsel, partners, a mix, stand up in front of the partnership and say, "Okay, this is seven, 8-minute approach. This is how I'm using it in my practice." And so, we had an M and A lawyer, we had a finance lawyer, we had a trial lawyer, we had an executive compensation partner, all got up and said, "This is how we're using it. This is what we're using. This is what we're doing with it."

And it was actually a pretty incredible presentation because they were actually demonstrating live action, live action real time, like, "Here's how I marked up this agreement using this president database and using Claude to do it." Pretty impressive.

Lance Glinn:

So, I want to pivot the conversation now to M and A specifically, and I want to really dive into deal making. And first, more broadly, when you just look at the current state of M and A as it is today, how would you characterize the activity levels, the deal structures, and just the general sentiment among buyers and sellers right now?

Keith Fullenweider:

I think M and A, I think most people thought 2026 was going to be a good M and A market. I think if you looked at what the major banks wrote about the outlook for M and A, they were relatively optimistic. Look, the cost of debt is if there's any one driver in M and A activity, it's the availability of capital markets, mainly debt capital markets, and those signs were all pointing in the right direction. I think AI also creates uncertainty. I think there's a fear among deal makers that they're going to make a mistake and miss how AI is going to affect a particular business.

Lance Glinn:

Sure.

Keith Fullenweider:

That's probably less case in the infrastructure business right now. I think infrastructure is a place where there's a lot of M and A potential and activity. Now, it's probably not going to be the larger deals. It's going to be things like Google buying intersect power, so that they can develop some of their own generation. They're not going to buy utility. They're going to buy people that can develop behind the mirror power, right? So, transactions like that make a lot of sense in the AI economy that we're looking at. So, I think you're going to see things driven by AI like that transaction. I'm not sure that'll drive large-

Lance Glinn:

Mega deals.

Keith Fullenweider:

... mega deals. But I think generally speaking, as long as there's not some geopolitical event that gets extended here and really creates economic uncertainty, that it should be a pretty good year for M and A.

Lance Glinn:

So, Keith, as we get towards the end of our conversation, I want to talk more about something we discussed earlier, that growth and that need to continue to evolve, to not get complacent, to make sure that you have sort of a growth mindset that allows you to build on obviously what's already been achieved. Now obviously Vinson & Elkins is a hundred plus year old firm. How are you instilling that sort of growth mindset to make sure that your lawyers and those at the top like yourself, don't just focus on what's happened in the last 100 plus years, but make sure that you're ready for what's going to be successful for the next hundred years.

Keith Fullenweider:

Yeah. Oh, it's interesting, you're using the term mindset. If lawyers in our firm who watch this, you'll probably laugh because they hear me talk about this book Mindset a lot written by a Stanford psychologist probably about 20 years ago now named Carol Dweck, but it's Mindset. And she uses the term growth mindset versus fixed mindset. And I think, look, the legal industry is a place where there's a danger that you can get into a fixed mindset because your credibility as a lawyer comes from your knowledge base and it comes from your experience and it comes from like, "I did this deal and I did this deal or I won this jury trial and I won this case."

And those things are all great and they're definitely important when you're trying to market yourself or get hired by the next client. But more important, I really have come to believe from practicing law for a long time is your ability to continue to evolve and grow. Clients change, industries change, the kind of transactions or the kind of disputes you're going to have change. My dad was a lawyer, he taught me a long time ago, like the cool thing about being a lawyer is you got to learn new stuff every day. And I think if you go at the business with that mindset, then clients find you more interesting, they find you more authentic.

And I think the reason that's good inside of a law firm is because people with a growth mindset realize that they need each other. They're not just trying to work with a fixed pie and get as much of it for themselves as they can.

Lance Glinn:

And I think that speaks to how you said earlier, right? The importance of growing together is better than growing individually.

Keith Fullenweider:

Sure. And I really believe that, and I think that will distinguish law firms over the next decade. Look, we've been in a period of time when it's been great to be in the legal business. Elite law firms have had an amazing run the last 10 or 15 years, and I can't predict, certainly wouldn't predict that that's going to change or go away, but I do think that the value of a firm's culture where people really see each other within the firm as assets and as people that they can help each other get better and that they can both win, win-win to use an overused phrase. But I really think that that's what the growth mindset is all about, and that's why we talk about it a lot inside V and E.

Lance Glinn:

So, now as we do wrap up our conversation, I want to take a little full circle. And obviously we started talking about Texas and the growth of the business landscape in Texas, so on and so forth. When you think about the state's future and the business landscape's future, what excites you most about it and how does Vinson & Elkins fit in to Texas's growth long-term?

Keith Fullenweider:

Yeah, I think Vinson & Elkins' horizons go way beyond Texas, but if you're focusing on the Texas part of it where we have the most skilled lawyers in Texas, I think, of any firm, and Texas continues to be a big driver of our business. I think it's really engaging with the financial institutions that are locating in Texas and building relationships with those financial institutions. That happened in my career early on with the investment banking community. They really moved to Texas to cover Texas-based companies. Now it's happening at a much broader level. You're going to have giant credit businesses that are based in Texas. You're going to have giant equity investment businesses that are based in Texas.

And so, I think the natural success for a professional services firm is to have the sort of individuals working in our firm who will naturally develop relationships and build trust with those professionals. And so, as the financial community deepens its roots in Texas, that really gives professional firms like V and E a chance to grow and even deepen its relationships in a way that's happened in other financial centers like London and New York naturally for many, many decades.

Lance Glinn:

Well, like you said, not just Texas, but London, New York, so many other locations. I'm excited to see how V and E continues to grow. Keith, thank you so much for joining us at Inside the ICE House.

Keith Fullenweider:

Thank you, Lance. It's great to be with you. I've really enjoyed it. Thanks for the conversation.

Lance Glinn:

Absolutely.

Speaker 4:

That's our conversation for this week. Remember to rate, review, and subscribe wherever you listen and follow us on X @ICEHousePodcast. From the New York Stock Exchange, we'll talk to you again next week Inside the ICE House. Information contained in this podcast was obtained in part from publicly available sources and not independently verified. Neither ICE nor its affiliates make any representations or warranties expressed or implied as to the accuracy or completeness of the information and do not sponsor, approve, or endorse any of the content herein, all of which is presented solely for informational and educational purposes.

Nothing herein constitutes an offer to sell, a solicitation of an offer to buy any security or a recommendation of any security or trading practice. Some portions of the proceeding conversation may have been edited for the purpose of length or clarity.