Jill Louis
Managing Partner (Dallas) – Perkins Coie
Description of field of expertise
Jill Louis is the Dallas office managing partner and a co-chair of the Infrastructure Development practice at the international law firm Perkins Coie. Jill focuses her practice on advising companies with growth-oriented, liquidity-creating, and transformational strategies. Her experience includes leading strategic transactions for entrepreneurs, private equity sponsors, and portfolio companies, as well as members of the Fortune 50® with a particular emphasis on infrastructure, multi-location retail, transportation, manufacturing, and industrial sector matters. As Dallas office managing partner, Jill provides strong leadership experience and deep connections in the Dallas market. In addition to her leadership roles at the firm, Jill is a high-capacity firm citizen leading pitch teams, speaking on panels, and developing and mentoring associates.
This year, Jill launched the podcast RelevantNOW focused on how businesses can use an ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) lens to solve business problems. Guests of the podcast analyze and provide a fresh take on the most relevant social issues we face today. To date, the podcast has covered issues including, homelessness as a result of the end of pandemic eviction moratoriums, public-private partnerships for urban education, reimagining policing in partnership with communities, and creative solutions for investment in emerging artists of color. As a woman of color in equity partnership and firm leadership, she represents the shattering of a glass ceiling accomplished by about 1% of Black women in her profession nationwide. She is working to change those statistics for the better.
In addition to her experience in private practice, Jill served as the general counsel for a large private equity portfolio company with over $1 billion in annual revenue, operating heavy duty parts distribution and service locations in 45 states. She also served as general counsel for a multinational shared workspace company with $600 million in revenue and operating both owned and franchised locations in all 50 U.S. states, Australia, Brazil, Canada, England, France, and Mexico. For more than ten years, she led the transactions group for the retail operating company of a global courier delivery service, managing commercial and technology transactions in North America and Asia and launching the same-day transportation delivery service.
What advice would you offer to new attorneys interested in your field?
I felt that as an African American, there were so many excellent litigators and civil rights lawyers, but that we did not have many who were in the transactional space. It was important to me to learn about how business worked and to be able to bring that back to my community and to benefit my community by my knowledge of business. I would encourage new attorneys to make sure that their practice brings about benefits to society at large and encourages a just, inclusive, and flourishing world.