Mikal Watts is chronicling the life of his new law firm on his personal Facebook page with the same exuberance that he shares photos of his grandsons.
“After an amicable split with my friend Frank Guerra, I’m at the Austin office of Watts Law Firm LLP by 6 am chasing that first worm,” he wrote on Feb. 5, sharing a photo of himself with a broad grin in front of a laptop, “Day One” written in giant type across its screen.
The breakup of Watts Guerra LLP — the high-profile mass torts, personal injury, product liability and commercial litigation law firm headquartered in San Antonio —may indeed have been amicable, as Francisco “Frank” Guerra IV has also said. The two have worked together since 2001; they formed Watts Guerra in 2013.
But the split also appears to have been relatively sudden. Watts and Guerra posed together for new firm photos in early December, and even after news of the separation broke on Bloomberg Law in January, the Watts Guerra website remained live until earlier this week, a narrow banner at the top alerting visitors that “a strategic and collaborative restructuring” is underway.
On Jan. 31, the San Antonio Express-News reported that Watts Guerra had been hired in a bankruptcy case stemming from a multimillion fraud case against ex-attorney Chris Pettit.
Guerra said Wednesday the new Guerra LLP law firm would keep that case, along with most of the old firm’s existing personal injury, product liability and commercial litigation cases. Watts Law Firm LLP, which is headquartered in Austin, will keep most of the mass torts cases — civil actions which involving numerous plaintiffs against one or a handful of defendants.
And because some attorneys who are staying with Guerra were working on certain mass torts cases, they will continue doing that work, he said, and vice versa. “We will still be doing everything,” Guerra said.
He said Guerra LLP employs roughly 75 to 100 people, about three-quarters of those in San Antonio, in the Pearl-area Creamery building. He said the Watts Guerra sign, visible from U.S. Highway 281, won’t be changed any time soon.
“You wouldn’t believe how long it takes to get these damn things made,” Guerra said. “But we may be able to do a temporary thing where they just take the ‘Watts’ down.”
Watts said he would be in the Austin office, where his brother and daughter practice, “occasionally, but not very often. My office is my plane. I’m constantly flying around.” He spoke to the San Antonio Report from a courthouse in Atlanta, where he was headed into a hearing in a class action case against SunTrust Bank, now Truist Bank, over alleged excessive fees.
Watts lives in Puerto Rico, where he moved at the beginning of the pandemic and opened an outpost of Watts Guerra focused on the firm’s mass tort cases. He said he would remain there for much of this year, but would eventually make Texas his home base again. He and his wife own a ranch outside Kerrville.
On Jan. 7, according to Bloomberg Law, Watts sent a companywide email that he was resigning for health reasons. Later that month, the estimated 110 employees in the Puerto Rico office received notice, signed by Watts, that Watts Guerra would be laying off 33% of its workforce, the first step in permanently closing down that office.
Some of the attorneys in that office will continue to work for Watts, others Guerra LLP, Guerra said.
Watts has also been spending time in Maui, where his firm is part of a team representing residents against Hawaiian Electric Co. and its subsidiaries. Wildfire litigation had become a major part of Watts Guerra’s portfolio in recent years. The firm headed up the team that won a $13.5 billion settlement against the power company PG&E for victims of California wildfires in 2017 and 2018, and reached $550 million in settlements over Oregon wildfires in 2020.
But with three grandsons and two more on the way in Texas, Watts said his wife, Tammy, was keen to move home and be closer to the growing clan. He said he is ready to slow down too, although that will take some time, given his existing caseload.
Once very active in Democratic party politics, Watts said his move to Puerto Rico slowed that down, but he doesn’t plan on ramping back up once he returns.
“Politics used to be my hobby,” he said. “Now it’s grandkids.”
Guerra said he understood his former partner’s wish to spend more time with family.
He said the pair built Watts Guerra “as a speed boat, but then it became a cruise ship — and we’re still trying to drive it like a speedboat.”
Watts, he said, “just isn’t interested in doing that anymore. But the reality is, it’s going to take us a while to do exactly what he wants to do, because of the cases that we have.”
He said San Antonio will continue to be Guerra LLP’s “hub office,” even as the practice remains “very national.” He said lawyers across the country with cases that are too expensive to fund or too complex to run, refer cases to his firm. Guerra LLP also has attorneys in California, New York, Washington, D.C., and Austin, he said.
Guerra said he’ll also keep what he calls the “Grasshoppers,” an internship program of law students and recent law school graduates who work with senior lawyers and gain experience.
“They’re a fantastic marketing tool,” he said. “They brag about their experience here … and then everyone wants to come work for the firm, and I get to pick the top talent from all over the country.”
Guerra said unlike his former partner, he has “no intention” of slowing down.
“I still want to build this into the next generation of fantastic lawyers, like someone did for me, and the young people around me, I want to fulfill the promise I gave to them when they came to work.”
