In celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month, Robert L. Soza Jr. and Mario Perez Dolan join Fast Takes to share their personal stories and reflections on their Hispanic heritage and legal careers.

Robert Soza, a fifth-generation Texan, discusses his upbringing in a small town, his journey to law school, and his unplanned but rewarding career in litigation. Mario Perez Dolan recounts his South Texas roots, the influence of strong women in his life, and his path from Princeton to corporate law. Both attorneys reflect on how their heritage and values align with Jackson Walker’s culture of integrity, community, and client focus.

Featured This Episode

Our Host:
Courtney White Research Attorney, Dallas & Houston Follow on LinkedIn » Instagram: @courthousecouture
Episode Guests:
Robert L. Soza, Jr. Partner, San Antonio Follow on LinkedIn »		Mario Perez Dolan Partner, Dallas Follow on LinkedIn »

Episode Transcription

Courtney White: Hi everyone. I am Courtney White, and this is Jackson Walker Fast Takes. September 15 through October 15 is Hispanic Heritage Month. Here at Jackson Walker, we are extremely proud of our Hispanic attorneys and allied professionals who have provided leadership and helped shape our firm into what it is today. I asked two of my colleagues to join the podcast. Robert Sosa Jr, a partner in our San Antonio office, and Mario Perez Dolan, a partner in the Dallas office. We’re so happy to have both of you here today. Welcome to the podcast.

Mario Perez Dolan: Thank you.

Robert Soza: Thanks, Courtney.

Courtney White: You’re welcome. Robert. Can you please share your story?

Robert Soza: Sure. I’m a fifth generation Texan. My family comes from Presidio, Texas, which is a border town bordering on the U.S.-Mexico border. I went to school in Alpine, Texas, graduated high school there very small high school class of 82 people, and then went to the University of Texas, undergraduate and University of Texas law school. I began my legal career in Los Angeles, California, because I felt like I really needed to get out of the state. Didn’t have much experience outside the state of Texas and felt like it would be a good thing to see some part of the U.S. outside of Texas. Moved back and began my legal career here in San Antonio in 1994 with another law firm that went out of business, and so I joined Jackson Walker in March of 2007 and been here ever since.

Courtney White: Could you please tell us a little bit about your family story and why you wanted to become a lawyer.

Robert Soza: I come from a family of merchants. My grandfather had a grocery store. My father had a pharmacy store. He was a pharmacist in Alpine and I went to school and studied English, which my parents weren’t very happy about. They worried about what I was going to do with an English degree. When I got out of school, I wanted to be a writer, and unfortunately for me, at the time that I got out, well, I had some writing credits and some writing jobs. The recession hit Texas, and so an English degree, and looking at graduate school, law school made a lot of sense. So, I went to law school, and little did I know that the ability to write is important for being a lawyer, not something I knew before going into law school, because I did not know any lawyers, and did not have any lawyers in my family. So, it was a very new experience for me.

Courtney White: So, you were an aspiring writer. I love that. Well, Mario, we would love to hear from you and hear your story next.

Mario Perez Dolan: Thank you, Courtney, and Thanks, Robert. It was great to hear about your background. Like Robert, I’m also the product of South Texas. I was born in Alice, Texas, and spent my formative years in Corpus Christi. I mean, I love South Texas. I love the palm trees, the plains, the ocean, the people, the tortillas. Like when I’m gone too long, I miss it. I get there, I feel the wind and it calms me. My family’s been from that part of the country since mid-1800s, Goodall County, Jim Wells County, San Diego, Freer. Yeah, it’s great. I still have family down there and enjoy, visiting. My grandparents, Emma and Osa Martinez, they settled in Alice, and it is kind of the heart of the family, where they raised my mom and uncle. My grandfather worked his whole career for the highway department, but he was a rancher. I mean, highway department was his job. He was a cowboy and rancher at heart. I still have one of his hats in my office. My grandmother, Emma, was an elementary school teacher, and really the center of any friend group she was a part of. She never met a stranger.

So, during my early years, I was actually raised by my mother, Dee. My mom found out she was pregnant with me her senior year of high school, and was ready to go to UT to study computer science, and things ended up changing. So, she married my biological father. They had another son, my brother, Randy. He is the taller, more successful brother, although I have a better head of hair. But my parents divorced shortly after he was born. After that, my mom moved to Corpus Christi to work as a secretary at Texaco and bunked up with two cousins of hers in a two-bedroom apartment. I still get grief from my Aunt Nora about crawling to eat dog food in the middle of the night when I was a toddler. But I mean, that was one of the earliest examples of, my whole life I’ve been surrounded and supported by strong and smart Hispanic women. I mean, the men in my life always led by example, my stepdad, my grandfather, my uncle, but it was the women who really made education important and kind of encouraged and held me accountable and humble. So, after my mom moved to Corpus with the two boys, two things important happened–Texaco filed bankruptcy, and she met my stepdad. So, the Texaco severance was what allowed her to go to nursing school at Del Mar Community College, and from there, got her RN as an associate, and now has a PhD in nursing administration, and has had a long–now retired– distinguished career working with patients from neonates to seniors, hospital administration, and even academia. And so, together with her nursing career and the dedication of my stepdad. He worked at Oxy chemical plant in Corpus, and he never missed an opportunity to work 12-hour shift and still drive a bunch of high schoolers, or teenagers, to tennis tournaments all over the country. It was really, I mean, that dedication that gave me the foundation to do well enough at school to get accepted to Princeton.

I love Princeton. I loved it. If I started talking Princeton right now, this would be a very long, very not-so-special, Fast Takes episode. So fast forward three years. I was I was decent at school, but I was good at college. So, law school seemed to make sense, and I had my brother and my buddies from Corpus were down in Austin. I liked Longhorns like I love Tigers. So, Austin made a lot of sense, and did very well my first year at UT. We won’t, we won’t talk about the rest of the years, but Craig Adams and Baker Botts gave me an offer to join the corporate group as a 1L. Funnily enough, he also encouraged me that summer to go meet the parents of the new girlfriend I’d been bringing to events. And 25 years later, we’ve got two boys, we’re married, live in East Dallas, and two really old dogs, 15 and 17. I’m practicing law, corporate law, at Jackson Walker. Not so, not at Baker Botts but over at Jackson Walker, it’s been great.

Jackson Walker, I’ve been your eight years. It’s the third firm I’ve been at, and while I’ve loved and appreciated the relationships and my colleagues in every firm I’ve been at, and keep in touch with them, Jackson Walker, the values here just seem to align–not the other place and didn’t — but Jackson Walker is kind of my goldilocks. The values of the firm align with the values that I appreciate and learned growing up. Our screens talk about integrity, client, focus, firm citizenship, added value, respect, optimism. Those are the same values that that I learned from my grandparents down in South Texas–honesty, work hard, be helpful, take care of your family and community. And here we really realize right, clients, community, colleagues. I mean, that’s an extended family that you look out for.

Courtney White: Absolutely.

Mario Perez Dolan: Yeah, and optimism and faith. I mean, I kind of see those two things as similar. You’re really kind of accepting and realizing that you get to be a positive force for people here. So, it’s great. They appreciate that. They appreciate this perspective, the perspective I learned at Princeton. My parents dropped me off at the airport in Corpus with a couple duffel bags, a phone card, and a shuttle schedule to get from Newark to Princeton. And they showed up at my graduation about four years later and it was the first time they really visited. But it was great. It was the best thing that ever happened to me. It forced me to get out there, meet people from all different perspectives–different geographically, culturally, politically, sexual orientation, and just meeting people, and they were so interesting, and it was really kind of exhilarating, and gave me the confidence to go out and just kind of interact with the world a little more genuinely and with the confidence. And it’s been great to be a part of a group over here at Jackson Walker where, a growth minded group of people who are using their different perspectives to work together to really generate new solutions and ideas for our colleagues and our clients.

Courtney White: Thank you so much for sharing your story, Mario. And before we end the podcast, I’d love to hear from you, Robert, and you, Mario. Robert, anything else you want to leave our listeners with about your story or about becoming an attorney?

Robert Soza: My career as an attorney has been something that I did not plan and has brought me a lot of fulfillment and satisfaction.  I have enjoyed practicing litigation and working with younger attorneys, working with attorneys outside the office, and enjoy presenting to juries and arguing to judges. Again, this is not something I thought that I would do with my life, but it has been an incredibly fortuitous accident that I went to law school.

Courtney White: I love that, so law school does not have to be planned. Thank you so much, and Mario, anything you want to leave our listeners with.

Mario Perez Dolan: Thanks again, Courtney and Robert. And it’s funny that Robert kind of mentioned fortuitousness, and then plans. I had, when we were prepping for this, I was thinking back, and one thing that I noticed last year was for older listeners, you probably when I talked about the Texaco bankruptcy. I realized that was a Texaco Pennzoil, and that bankruptcy was forced by partially by Carl Icahn.

Last year, I had the opportunity to lead the transaction team here at Jackson Walker, representing IEH Auto Parts, which was an Icahn portfolio company, also known as Auto Plus, in the sale of their 363 sale their assets and connects with their bankruptcy –a transaction that was named deal of the Year by M&A Restructuring Advisors for transactions over 250, less than $500 million. And while the awards are great, the coolest thing was the court records have testimony from our CEO and talking about how the work at Jackson Walker, the IEH business team, our bankers’ advisors, were able to get a transaction done that allowed thousands of people to keep their jobs during that bankruptcy. So, it was a little coincidence, a little fortuitous. It put a bounce in my step for a couple weeks, and it is just one of those things that you never think would happen, and kind of shows at times, a full circle of how some of the most rewarding parts of your career are things you wouldn’t expect.

Courtney White: That is awesome, Mario. What a full circle moment. Well, I want to thank both you, Robert, and you Mario, for joining the podcast today.

Robert Soza: Thank you.

Mario Perez Dolan: Thank you, Courtney.

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The music is by Eve Searls.

The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of the firm, its clients, or any of its or their respective affiliates. This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice.

Meet Robert

With extensive experience as a first-chair trial and appellate attorney, Robert L. Soza, Jr. adeptly represents both plaintiffs and defendants in a range of legal matters, including environmental disputes, personal injury claims, property damage claims, and civil and criminal enforcement actions brought by federal agencies like the U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Department of the Treasury, Office of Foreign Assets Control, the U.S. Department of the Commerce, Bureau of Industry and Security, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Recognized for his exceptional skills, Robert has consistently been ranked among Chambers USA: America’s Leading Lawyers for Business for Litigation: General Commercial in the San Antonio area since 2020. He has also been named as one of The Best Lawyers in America in the areas of Commercial Litigation and Litigation—Environmental since 2021, recognized as a Texas Super Lawyer by Thomson Reuters, and inclusion among the Lawdragon 500 Leading Litigators in America in 2022.

Meet Mario

Mario Perez Dolan represents clients in a broad array of transactional matters, including mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, private equity investments, and corporate governance. Mario has extensive experience representing public and private companies, private equity funds, and family offices, which provides him the background and understanding required to provide solutions to the unique challenges presented in each transaction. Mario has been recognized among D Magazine’s “Best Lawyers in Dallas” 2022-2023 list, and The Best Lawyers in America in the area of Corporate Law.