H. Lee Godfrey ’69, one of the nation’s preeminent trail lawyers and a co-founder of the legendary boutique law firm bearing his name, died on June 2 after a long illness. He was 86.
Godfrey was deeply involved in the life of Texas Law almost as soon as he set foot in Townes Hall in 1966. He was a chancellor-at-large, the managing editor of the Texas Law Review, and, upon graduation, was inducted into the Order of the Coif. Later, he became a trustee of the Law School Foundation, serving on the board from 2005 until 2011. Godfrey was so esteemed by his colleagues on the foundation’s board that they named him a senior trustee in 2016, and then a senior life trustee in 2021.
Godfrey and his wife Sandy were prolific philanthropists, with a special focus on the cultural institutions of their adopted hometown of Houston. That generosity also extended to institutions of learning and his beloved University of Texas School of Law. In 1992, the Godfreys endowed the Thomas H. Godfrey Presidential Scholarship in Law in honor of Lee’s father. Then in 2005, the Susman Godfrey firm made a multi-million-dollar gift to create the Susman Godfrey LLP Fund for Faculty Excellence. That gift led to the dedication of the Susman Godfrey Atrium as the law school’s central gathering space. (At the time, Godfrey and his co-founder Steve Susman ’65 and 14 other of the firm’s 36 partners had graduated from Texas Law.)
Godfrey was widely admired for his erudition, unrivaled work ethic, and a sharp, quick wit that he could use to disarm colleagues, judges, and juries.
Simplifying the Complex
Another tool in his arsenal was an uncommon memory for names, faces, and personal details. Kenneth Marks ’81, a partner at Susman Godfrey from 1987 to 2016, once told the story of how Godfrey took a stack of handwritten juror information sheets a short time before the start of jury selection for a trial and memorized the names of 32 prospective jurors.
“He addressed his questions to each juror by name,” remembered Marks. “At first it seemed like a parlor trick, but as he jumped from row to row and juror to juror it was clear he (really) knew all their names.”
Godfrey viewed jury trials as a matter of simplifying the complex. “I try to get as down to earth with the jury as I can,” Godfrey observed in a 2009 interview. “A lawyer’s job is to take a mass of material and make it understandable to the average person.”
Some of this approach owed to his humble rural upbringing, and some of it to his training at Texas Law.
Godfrey was born in 1939 in Palestine, Texas, two hours southeast of Dallas. He was a National Merit Scholar out of high school and spent time at both Tulane and Texas A&M before enlisting in the Air Force, serving from 1961 – 1965. The Air Force sent him to Yale University’s Institute of Far Eastern Languages, where he learned Mandarin, leading to a two-year deployment to Taiwan.
He was known decades later to order full meals at his favorite Chinese restaurants in fluent Mandarin.
After his honorable discharge, Godfrey enrolled in The University of Texas, earning degrees in chemistry and English literature, before attending law school.
“For just $100 a semester, I got Charles Alan Wright, Albert Jones, Gus Hodges, Dean Keeton… Those professors and that faculty taught us a whole different way of looking at and thinking about things,” said Godfrey.
Legal Mount Rushmore
Among Godfrey’s many recognitions in his lifetime were the Anti-Defamation League’s 2007 Karen H. Susman Jurisprudence Award, established in memory of his dear friend, the late wife of his firm co-founder, and the Texas Exes Distinguished Alumnus Award, presented to him in 2009.
He was one of the greatest trial lawyers of the last half-century, a brilliant and innovative law firm founder, and an enthusiastic and supportive alumnus of this law school.
Dean Bobby Chesney
“Lee Godfrey was a titan,” says Dean Bobby Chesney. “He was one of the greatest trial lawyers of the last half-century, a brilliant and innovative law firm founder, and an enthusiastic and supportive alumnus of this law school.”
“If there’s a Mount Rushmore of legal legends, Lee Godfrey is on it.”
Susman Godfrey
Also on that hypothetical Mount Rushmore is the late Susman, who died in 2020. Godfrey and Susman first met in 1968, when Godfrey was a TLR editor and Susman, just a few years out of law school and serving as the inaugural president of the Texas Law Review Association, met to plan the law review’s annual year-end banquet.
Susman was immediately impressed with Godfrey’s poise and intellect. Though Susman had graduated three years prior, Godfrey was older by two years. Susman tried unsuccessfully to recruit Godfrey to his then-employer, Fulbright & Jaworski, but the two remained friends.
In 1975, they found themselves both living in Austin, Susman on a one-year position teaching at the law school and Godfrey as a partner at Graves Daugherty. This time, Godfrey tried to convince Susman to join his firm, but Susman felt his fortune lay elsewhere. “I believed the practice I wanted could only be had in Houston or Dallas,” Susman recalled in 2016.
In 1982, the stars aligned and Susman and Godfrey joined forces, along with Gary McGowan, to form Susman Godfrey & McGowan in Houston. (McGowan left the firm in 1990.)
While the pairing of Susman and Godfrey might have appeared unexpected to some—given their very different personalities and proven professional strengths—Susman viewed those differences as the source of their outsize accomplishments.
“Our joint success was due to our bringing complimentary talents and interests to building a firm,” Sussman recalled in 2016, adding that Godfrey was “a better trial lawyer than me, a more flamboyant bon vivant, and a suave and radiant personality. I was an institution builder, concerned with rules, business development, communication, and training.”
Whatever the chemistry was that made Godfrey and Susman so potent together, their success was undeniable. The firm today has 221 attorneys—including 27 graduates of Texas Law, more than any other law school—in four offices across the country, insisting on remaining small relative to other top firms. It has nonetheless been ranked as the country’s No. 1 litigation boutique every year since 2011.
Services for Lee Godfrey will be held in Houston on Tuesday, June 17.