April 11, 2003

GREATER METROPLEX -- Identifying the top performers among the Metroplex's wealth of legal talent is no easy task, so we started by defining a specific group of lawyers -- litigation specialists who operate in the sphere of business law. We then conducted interviews with academics, business leaders and top legal talent to refine our selection criteria. We followed that up with a random survey conducted by Business Wire of local business owners and executives to find out what they look for -- and look out for -- when hiring or facing off against a top trial attorney.

Finally, we collated our -- admittedly subjective -- findings to identify about 30 local litigators, from which we selected the 10 names we heard most often.

To find out what makes the final 10 tick, we asked them to tell us about some of the landmark cases in their careers.

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Mark S. Werbner           Sayles, Lidji & Werbner P.C.

Position:                       Named partner

Hometown:                   San Antonio

University attended:      University of Texas

Law school attended:    Southern Methodist University School of Law

Years in practice:         25

Areas of expertise:       Complex business litigation, civil trial law and white-collar-criminal defense

Minimum billing rate per hour: $380 to $425.

Most high-profile case: One of my highest-profile cases was the 1996 trial against American Airlines in which I represented business executives who suffered serious injuries in an automobile accident at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport as a result of the overwhelming size and distractions caused by American Airlines' four-story gate-information signs.

The subsequent $24 million jury verdict against American Airlines received significant media attention both locally and nationally, including articles in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.

Ultimately, American was forced to take down the signs as a result of our successful verdict.

A more recent high-profile case was my representation of COC Services Ltd. in a lawsuit against CompUSA and Carlos Slim.