Gibbs & Bruns LLP

Partner, Gibbs & Bruns LLP

Kathy Patrick is a partner at Gibbs & Bruns LLP, a premier litigation boutique based in Houston.  Kathy’s cases run the gamut of high profile, high dollar, and high risk cases. She has represented clients pursuing recoveries for securities frauds in Brazil, Thailand, and Indonesia, the private prison industry, the waste disposal industry, and in mortgage-backed securities. She has also pursued commercial cases for clients seeking to enforce leveraged buyout agreements, construction contracts, and corporate indemnities. On the defense side, she successfully defended a client accused of a market allocation conspiracy in the North Sea, defended the outside directors of Enron and Westar in regulatory investigations and securities litigation, and is leading the defense of a large energy company in environmental and energy litigation. Kathy’s representative clients include: Occidental Petroleum Corporation, ExxonMobil, PIMCO, BlackRock, Trust Company of the West, Invesco, Western Asset Management, the former outside directors of Enron Corporation and the State of Arizona.

In the wake of the financial crisis, Kathy led a team that pursued recoveries for a group of fourteen large institutional investors who purchased securitized mortgages that contained fraudulent or ineligible loans. Over a period of five years, Kathy and her team recovered more than $22 billion in cash and additional billions of dollars in mortgage servicing reforms from major financial institutions including Bank of America, JPMorgan, Citigroup, Residential Capital, and Lehman Brothers. Forbes magazine profiled Kathy’s RMBS efforts and called her “the woman Wall Street fears most” and the Wall Street Journal called her “the secret weapon for big bond investors seeking to recover billions of dollars on faulty mortgage-backed securities.”

Kathy is a bulldog in the courtroom and super-aggressive in the best way. She is a litigator who studies really hard and becomes an expert in whatever the case involves quickly. She is go-to for significant litigation and is truly phenomenal.

Kathy is incredibly smart and her name commands so much respect. She is a powerhouse.

Kathy is incisive, thinks on her feet and is exceptionally talented in litigation. She does not take the client lightly and is just amazing at managing a case.

Kathy has a national reputation as a trial lawyer. She can take complex ideas and reduce them to a jury so they can understand. She brings great skill in that area. Kathy is a great writer and oral advocate and she brings gravitas to her representation of her clients.

  - Chambers 2026

The fantastic Kathy Patrick is a formidable opponent.

  - Legal 500 2025

I’ve seen her in action and she is phenomenal.  You do not want to be on the other side!

She is super-impressive.

Kathy Patrick is a great lawyer with a complex practice.  She really is a star and is feared.  She is very good at what she does.

Kathy is a standout and extraordinary lawyer with great courtroom skills.

She’s very knowledgeable in her area, represents clients well and contributes a lot. She’s smart, she understands what she wants to achieve and will figure out a way to achieve it. She has a really good presence and is very effective in what she does. She achieves all results and everyone respects her.

  - Chambers USA  2022-2025

Following graduation from law school, Kathy was a law clerk to Judge John R. Brown of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit from 1985 to1986.  Kathy is a Fellow of the International Academy of Trial Lawyers, where she serves on the Board of Directors, and The American College of Trial Lawyers where she serves on the Texas Admissions Committee.