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Attorney Advertising. The information on this profile does not constitute legal advice and no attorney-client relationship is formed by reading it. Past results described do not guarantee similar outcomes.
At a Glance
| Firm | Slater Matsil, LLP |
| Key attorneys | Steven H. Slater, Ira S. Matsil |
| Office | 17950 Preston Road, Suite 1000, Dallas, TX 75252 |
| Focus | Intellectual property, with a secondary employment law practice |
| Recognition | Steven Slater, Texas Super Lawyers 2009–2023 and 2025–2026 |
| Firm size | Boutique, multiple attorneys admitted in Texas and New York |
| Fee structure | Not publicly posted; contact firm directly |
Origin & Founder History
Steven H. Slater, a Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law graduate, has anchored the firm’s IP practice for over 15 years and has been named to the Texas Super Lawyers list nearly every year from 2009 through 2023, with a further selection in 2025 and 2026 — a recognition streak spanning close to two decades that reflects sustained, consistent peer standing rather than a single strong year. Ira S. Matsil, also an SMU Dedman Law graduate, brings a dual practice in employment law and intellectual property, a combination that serves clients facing IP disputes with an employment dimension, such as departing-employee trade secret matters.
Practice Concentration
The firm’s core practice is intellectual property, with named attorneys covering patent matters (James Carl Kesterson, University of Houston Law Center), communications and internet law alongside IP (John David Koetter), and general IP practice (Roger Clark Knapp, Stephen Austin Cortiaus, Lizabeth Vice). Robert Gerald Graham is admitted in both Texas and New York, giving the firm reach into matters that cross state lines. This breadth of individually specialized attorneys within a single boutique suggests a firm structured to cover multiple facets of IP work — prosecution, litigation, and the employment-law overlap that trade secret and non-compete matters often present — rather than a single-attorney generalist practice.
Track Record
No specific settlement or verdict figures were independently located for this profile. Steven Slater’s sustained, near-two-decade Super Lawyers selection is itself a meaningful proxy for consistent peer-recognized case quality over time, since that list is re-evaluated annually rather than granted once.
Client Voice
Awesome Attorneys did not locate individually attributed, detailed client testimonials for Slater Matsil as of this profile’s research.
Beyond the Courtroom
The firm’s roster of SMU Dedman Law graduates across multiple attorneys (Slater, Matsil, Cortiaus, Koetter, Knapp) suggests deep local ties to the Dallas legal training pipeline, which can translate into strong relationships with the local bench and bar built over the course of attorneys’ overlapping careers in the same market.
Recognition
Steven H. Slater’s selection to Texas Super Lawyers for IP work spanning 2009 through 2023, and again in 2025–2026, is an independently verified, peer-nomination-based recognition from Thomson Reuters — one of the more sustained individual recognition records documented in this Dallas IP category. No Texas Board of Legal Specialization certification was located for the firm’s named attorneys as of this profile’s research.
Texas Legal Backdrop
Trade secret disputes with an employment dimension — a departing employee alleged to have taken confidential information to a competitor — typically involve both the Texas Uniform Trade Secrets Act (Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code Chapter 134A) and, where applicable, a signed non-compete or non-disclosure agreement governed by Texas Business and Commerce Code Chapter 15.50, which sets specific reasonableness requirements for a Texas non-compete to be enforceable. None of this is legal advice; an employer or departing employee facing a potential trade secret or non-compete dispute should consult counsel about the specific agreement and facts involved.
Awesome Attorneys Assessment
Slater Matsil’s differentiator is Steven Slater’s genuinely rare, nearly two-decade-long, consistently renewed Texas Super Lawyers recognition, combined with Ira Matsil’s specific dual employment-and-IP practice — a real asset for the trade secret and departing-employee disputes that sit at the intersection of those two fields.
The honest trade-off is that Awesome Attorneys could not independently locate detailed case results, published client reviews, or additional peer-review credentials (such as Best Lawyers or TBLS certification) for this firm beyond the Super Lawyers recognition and bar records, which limits how fully this profile can characterize the firm’s specific track record. A prospective client should ask the firm directly for representative matter examples relevant to their specific IP need.
Methodology & Sourcing
This profile was compiled from Super Lawyers attorney profiles for Steven H. Slater, Ira S. Matsil, and colleagues, and State Bar of Texas licensing records for the firm’s named attorneys (James Carl Kesterson, Stephen Austin Cortiaus, John David Koetter, Roger Clark Knapp, Robert Gerald Graham, Lizabeth Vice). No independent firm website content beyond contact and attorney listing information was located for this profile.
Publisher Disclosure & Independence Notice
This profile is an independent editorial article published by Awesome Attorneys. Awesome Attorneys does not endorse, recommend, or warrant any lawyer or law firm profiled on this site, and inclusion in this series is not paid placement. Facts in this profile were researched from public sources as described in the Methodology & Sourcing section and are current only as of the research date.