[In college], I was debating between law, the ministry, and public administration. I decided that with a law degree I could do anything; with the other degrees I would be limited.
Kevin Delaney: Career Highlights
1984: Earns a BA in political science from Austin College
1987: Obtains a law degree from Baylor Law School, which has a reputation for producing trial lawyers
1988: Learns the importance of the big picture after a partner sends him into a hearing that the partner knew he would lose. “We got the necessary information in front of the judge, and that ultimately won the case,” Delaney says
1988: Learns the importance of the big picture after a partner sends him into a hearing that the partner knew he would lose. “We got the necessary information in front of the judge, and that ultimately won the case,” Delaney says
1995: Handles a federal grand-jury investigation for antitrust violations during his 10th day as general counsel at GS Roofing Products
2003: Accepts a position with Quanex as a vice president and general counsel
I worked as a gopher at a law firm and realized it would be easier to start as a trial lawyer then do something else later than to do the reverse. My first job was for Bailey & Williams, a Dallas practice that did medical-malpractice and product-liability defense statewide.
I hiked the Himalayan Mountains in Nepal with the senior partner and started to think about life. I realized that when you’re at church feeling guilty because you’re not at the office, there’s something wrong. When I got back, some partners at a Longview firm, Merriam, Patterson & Allison, saw me in the courtroom and tried to recruit me. It took me six months to say yes. It was an opportunity to get more experience and try my own cases, but it paid less, and as a single young man of 27 years, I didn’t want to go to a small town in east Texas.
Doing medical malpractice law, I saw the preventative aspect of medicine and wanted to apply that to my work as a trial lawyer. I was cleaning up problems that already existed; I didn’t get to counsel clients about how to avoid them. I ended up at GTE Directories in Dallas-Fort Worth. I was the first lawyer to win the company’s annual award of excellence in customer service, for which 5,000 employees are considered.
I worked in-house at two other companies: I was general counsel at GS Roofing Products and [in] the TRANE company’s residential and light commercial division. I had a great time, but I wanted to be general counsel for a New York Stock Exchange company. So, I played Warren Buffett. I ordered copies of 200 annual reports and looked through them for old-line manufacturing and distribution companies without a general counsel. I ultimately narrowed it down to three and wrote letters to the CEOs. Quanex responded.
[Once there], I asked, “If internal clients weren’t forced to come to me, would they still pay me $200 an hour?” I decided to take the word “no” out of my vocabulary. Unless businesspeople are about to commit a crime or take on a significant risk, my job is to get them to “yes.” For example, we had a 12-week strike last year with the teamsters in our aluminum operations, and I worked the factory floor to keep the operations running to supply our customers with metal. Mille Snapper with Barnes & Thornburg led our negotiations to get us a win-win agreement to enable us to have a competitive contract. That approach has served me well.
Get exposure at a law firm before going in-house, and try to be a generalist, unless you know you want to be an environmental lawyer or patent lawyer forever and always. As general counsel, you need to be a generalist and get experience with litigation, contracts, and SEC filings. ABQ
