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Clouse Brown PLLC: A Boutique That Represents Both Employers and Executives

Most firms in this Dallas employment lawyer directory pick a side and stay there. Clouse Brown PLLC does not: its own marketing describes representing “senior executives, licensed professionals, management teams, and companies” in the same practice, and its founders’ case histories show verdicts and settlements on both sides of the employer-employee relationship. Awesome Attorneys is disclosing that mixed representation upfront, in the headline, because it is the single most important fact a reader needs before evaluating anything else in this profile.

At a Glance: This Dallas Executive Employment Lawyer’s Credentials

I. Two Veteran Employment Lawyers, One New Firm

Keith Clouse and Alyson Brown had already practiced together for roughly two decades, since 1999, when they launched Clouse Brown in 2019, bringing four additional attorneys with them from their prior firm, Clouse Dunn LLP. Clouse brings more than 30 years of experience and has been on the Texas Super Lawyers list every year since 2003 — more than two decades running. Brown has been selected to the Super Lawyers list since 2012 and was named one of Super Lawyers’ Top 50 women lawyers in Texas. Both are individually Board Certified in Labor and Employment Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization, a credential the firm notes fewer than 1% of the roughly 103,000 licensed attorneys in Texas hold.

II. A Practice Built to Represent Both Sides

Clouse Brown’s own site is explicit that it represents “senior executives, licensed professionals, management teams, and companies,” and its client testimonials page features almost exclusively employer-side voices — CEOs, board chairmen, and a general counsel — rather than individual employees. Case histories on the firm’s site bear this out on both sides: founding attorney Keith Clouse has obtained defense verdicts for companies in wrongful-discharge and retaliatory-discharge trials, while also winning multi-million-dollar verdicts and arbitration awards on behalf of individual executives in breach-of-contract disputes. In one instance, attorney Jesse Clouse and a colleague secured a $1.7 million jury verdict explicitly on behalf of an employer in a case alleging breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty, fraud, and civil conspiracy against former employees.

III. Practice Concentration

The firm negotiates and litigates executive employment agreements, severance packages, non-compete and non-solicitation disputes, trade secret misappropriation claims, and breach of fiduciary duty matters, along with discrimination, harassment, and retaliation claims — representing whichever side of the case retains the firm. Clients described on the firm’s own materials include C-suite executives, physicians and other licensed professionals, management teams, and corporations across industries including financial services, energy, healthcare, and technology.

IV. Track Record

Prior results do not guarantee or predict a similar outcome. Because this firm represents both employers and employees, the results below are labeled by side to keep that distinction clear.

Representing individual executives: in March 2024, Keith Clouse obtained a $4.0 million arbitration award from JAMS for breach of an executive employment agreement (net to the executive of $3.2 million). In November 2001, he obtained a $7.4 million jury verdict in a breach of contract and sex discrimination case (net to client $5.8 million). In 2018, Jesse Clouse was part of a team that obtained a $3.7 million jury verdict against a church for failing to honor supplemental retirement benefits owed to two former employees.

Representing employers: in April 2009, Keith Clouse successfully defended a company in a two-week wrongful-discharge jury trial. In November 2011, he successfully defended a Dallas law firm in a federal retaliatory-discharge lawsuit. In July 2025, Jesse Clouse and a colleague secured a $1.7 million jury verdict on behalf of an employer against former employees for breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty, fraud, and civil conspiracy.

V. Client Voice

Clouse Brown’s own client-reviews page collects several detailed testimonials, but Awesome Attorneys was unable to independently verify these through a third-party review platform: the firm’s Facebook business page shows zero reviews, and no aggregated Google or Avvo rating was located during this research. The testimonials that are visible — from a bank CEO, a former hospital-system chairman, a general counsel, and a country club general manager — are uniformly from employer-side or executive clients rather than individual employees pursuing claims against an employer, which is consistent with the firm’s stated client base but leaves the employee side of its practice without a visible public review record.

VI. Beyond the Courtroom

Keith Clouse was inducted into the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers in 2019 and taught mediation and arbitration of employment disputes as an adjunct professor at Tulane Law School from 2018 to 2022. He has served as an AAA employment arbitrator since 2007. Alyson Brown similarly serves as an arbitrator in employment disputes through AAA, JAMS, and FINRA. The firm has held a Tier 1 Best Law Firms ranking in Dallas/Fort Worth employment law every year since its first full year of operation.

VII. Recognition

Peer-reviewed and independently conferred credentials: Texas Board of Legal Specialization certification in Labor and Employment Law for both founders; Chambers USA recognition for the firm in 2025 and 2026; The Best Lawyers in America recognition for both founders, with Keith Clouse named 2025 Dallas/Fort Worth Lawyer of the Year for Labor and Employment Litigation; D Magazine Best Lawyers in Dallas recognition for both founders, with Clouse inducted into D Magazine’s inaugural Best Lawyers Hall of Fame in 2022; and Texas Super Lawyers selection for both founders across two decades combined. Awesome Attorneys notes that several of these lists, including D Magazine’s, begin with peer nomination but are refined through independent editorial review, distinguishing them from pure pay-to-play award programs.

VIII. The Texas Legal Backdrop

Because Clouse Brown’s practice spans both sides of employment disputes, both the employee-protective and employer-protective sides of Texas employment law are relevant to its work. Texas remains an at-will employment state with narrow exceptions, including the Sabine Pilot exception barring termination solely for refusing to commit an illegal act. Non-compete and trade secret disputes — a significant part of the firm’s work on both sides — are governed by the Texas Covenants Not to Compete Act (Texas Business and Commerce Code Chapter 15.50) and the Texas Uniform Trade Secrets Act (Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code Chapter 134A), the latter of which allows for injunctive relief and, in cases of willful and malicious misappropriation, exemplary damages.

On the discrimination and retaliation side, federal Title VII, ADA, and ADEA claims generally require an EEOC charge before suit, and the Texas Commission on Human Rights Act (Texas Labor Code Chapter 21) requires a parallel charge with the Texas Workforce Commission’s Civil Rights Division within 180 days of the alleged act.

IX. Awesome Attorneys Assessment: This Dallas Employment Lawyer’s Strengths and Limits

Clouse Brown’s credentials are genuinely elite by any measure: dual board certification held by both founders, Chambers USA recognition, and a Best Lawyers Lawyer of the Year title are not common in this category. For a senior executive negotiating a departure or an employer facing complex litigation, this is a highly credentialed option.

The limitation that matters most for readers of this directory is structural, not a quality concern: this firm represents both sides of the employer-employee relationship, sometimes in the very same year. A worker considering this firm to pursue a claim against their employer should ask directly whether Clouse Brown has any current or past relationship with that employer, since the firm’s business model depends on being retained by both sides across its overall caseload. That is not a defect in the firm’s work — it is disclosed by the firm itself — but it is a meaningfully different proposition from the plaintiff-only firms elsewhere in this category, and Awesome Attorneys is naming that difference directly rather than letting the firm’s polished executive-focused marketing obscure it.

X. Methodology & Sourcing

This profile was compiled from Clouse Brown’s own website (clousebrown.com), including attorney biographies, case results, client reviews, and firm news pages; Super Lawyers’ firm and attorney profiles; D Magazine’s coverage of the firm’s Best Lawyers recognitions; and LinkedIn’s firm page. The mixed-representation finding is based directly on the firm’s own stated client base and its own published case results showing outcomes on both the employer and employee sides. No case results, credentials, or quotes were invented; where independent third-party review data was unavailable, that gap is disclosed rather than filled.

Publisher Disclosure & Independence Notice

Awesome Attorneys is an independent legal directory and editorial publication. This profile was not paid for, commissioned, or reviewed by Clouse Brown PLLC prior to publication. Awesome Attorneys may in the future offer sponsored placements clearly labeled as such, but no payment of any kind determines inclusion in, or the content of, this editorial profile. This article is for informational purposes only, does not constitute legal advice, and does not create an attorney-client relationship between the reader and Clouse Brown PLLC or Awesome Attorneys.