Chris advocates for people and causes he believes in. He represents individuals and businesses as they confront powerful interests on the other side: property owners in disputes with the government, landowners in eminent-domain cases, and others with an important cause in a civil trial or appeal.

Chris has won cases for clients in courts across the country—from state and federal trial and appellate courts to the U.S. Supreme Court. He also served as an adjunct professor at the University of Texas School of Law, where for seven years he taught an upper-level course on property rights and eminent domain.

Chris grew up and attended public schools in Buckhannon, West Virginia. He went to Brigham Young University and, after his first year of college, served for two years as a full-time volunteer for his church in Oakland and San Francisco. Chris spent most of his time in neighborhoods unlike anything he’d ever seen in rural West Virginia. He can’t imagine a better education: speaking with thousands of people about life and spiritual paths; becoming fluent in Spanish; and making friends with individuals from many countries and many walks of life, from gang members to high-level government officials. Chris decided during his volunteer service that he eventually wanted to become a lawyer and advocate. He studied English upon return to BYU, graduating magna cum laude in 1997.

Chris received his J.D. with high honors from the University of Texas School of Law, where he was editor in chief of the Texas Law Review and a member of the Chancellors honor society. He received Dean’s Achievement Awards in several of his classes. After graduation, Chris clerked for the Honorable Phyllis A. Kravitch of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.

He then attended the University of Oxford, where he received a postgraduate law degree and authored a frequently cited dissertation analyzing the relationship between property and the law of obligations. Chris entered private practice at Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP, where he worked with former Texas Solicitor General Greg Coleman in the firm’s national Supreme Court and appellate practice. 

Chris appears on the 2018 through 2024 lists of The Best Lawyers in America, a peer-selected honor. Texas Super Lawyers Magazine has named him to its “Super Lawyers” lists for every year from 2013 through 2023 and to its “Rising Stars” lists in 2013 and 2014. Chris has testified about property rights on invitation from the Texas Legislature, is a regular speaker at national and state CLE conferences, and has received multiple pro bono service awards.

Chris is licensed in Texas and New York and is admitted to practice before the Supreme Court of the United States, the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, and District of Columbia Circuits, the U.S. District Courts for the Eastern, Southern, and Western Districts of Texas, the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, other federal courts across the country, and all state courts in Texas.

Chris believes relationships are the most important thing in life. Chris is lucky to be married to an amazing woman and to have three loving sons.