Marcella Burke is an ambitious woman in a hurry: She is the Managing Partner at the Burke Law Group in Houston, Texas. Her goal for the law firm is to become a top Am Law firm with upwards of 100 lawyers. Currently, the Firm has a team of 20 attorneys with offices in Austin, Houston, Los Angeles,California, and Washington D.C; the firm is planning to expand to Florida and Nashville, Tennessee.
The Burke Law Group is for lawyers whose positions have been terminated from firms she describes having adopted the ideologies of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) as well as Environmental, Social, and Governance standards, or ESG. “We are lawyers who want to be lawyers,” she contends, referring to her colleagues’ desire to work primarily with their clients in mind. After managing several hundred attorneys in the U.S. Department of Interior during the Trump-Administration followed by her subsequent experience working for other law firms, Burke sought to create an alternative, saying that “the status quo is not how it has to be.”
Responding to how her firm remains competitive and stands out, Burke explains that her clients are loyal. “This is incredibly important for the success of her firm,” she stresses while emphasizing that many of her current clients refer it to new ones. The policy maker-turned-entrepreneur seeks out clients who share her values.
The Burke Law Group is headquartered in Houston, Texas.
Since the firm does not have human resources and administrative teams, it can charge its clients less for its services, increasing the overall competition of the firm. The firm also manages to pay its employees comparable salaries relative to other firms, Burke reveals.
While she does not hire staff based on political preference, Burke recruits attorneys who share her values. “This is one thing that I learned about entrepreneurship over time: one must make sure to have the right people.” She doesn’t mince words as Burke wants attorneys “who don’t take things personally,” as that type of mindset sidelines the need for lawyers to be professionals who are client focused.
Though she does not to tell her attorneys what to read, she requires her employees, in addition to herself, to exercise “extreme ownership” over their actions, a term coined by former Navy SEALS Jocko Willink and Leif Basi in their book Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALS Lead and Win. Burke expects members of the firm to take ownership of something under their watch, whether or not he or she was responsible.
Answering how she wants to grow her organization, Burke says she intends to take on more merger and acquisition cases while expanding into more niche areas like taxation, intellectual property, and cybersecurity. Moreover, she is seeking future partnerships with larger public companies.
