Six A&R Attorneys Selected Among 2025 Texas Super Lawyers and Rising Stars

Six Adams & Reese attorneys from the firm’s Houston office have been selected by their peers among the 2025 Texas Super Lawyers and Rising Stars. A Thomson Reuters publication, Texas Super Lawyers magazine rates outstanding lawyers from more than 75 practice areas who have attained a high degree of peer recognition and professional achievement. 

Attorneys designated as “Rising Stars” are up-and-coming attorneys who are 40 years of age or younger and have practiced law for 10 years or less. No more than 2.5 percent of the lawyers in the state are selected by the research team to receive this honor.

This year’s Adams & Reese honorees include:

• Lee Butler – Business Litigation
• Staton Childers – Civil Litigation: Defense
• Adam Massey – Civil Litigation: Defense
• David Toney – Construction Litigation
• Bradley Waters – Civil Litigation: Defense
• Collin Weyand (Rising Stars) – Insurance Coverage

In addition, Texas Super Lawyers published a feature on Adams & Reese Partner Staton Childers – “Readin’, Writin’, and Rodeo”. The article discusses Childers’ passions outside of his practice, which includes education, the Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo, and his love for barbecue.

Childers’ longtime involvement with the rodeo has let him combine all four loves. As a youth, Childers was active in Future Farmers of America and showed pigs at the rodeo. The scholarship led him to Texas A&M University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in agricultural economics, then worked as a purchasing agent at Blue Bell Creameries before pursuing his passion for law at the University of Houston Law Center.

“The HLSR (Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo) state FFA scholarship gave me, a young kid from New Braunfels who raised pigs and lambs, the opportunity to go to college,” says Childers.

After moving to Houston, he joined HLSR, “with the intent to help give others the same opportunity I was given.” Soon he was serving on the organization’s Legal Advisory Committee, which created a barbecue team for lawyers and judges, and his team, “Sharks R Us” competes annually in the HLSR World’s Championship Bar-B-Que Contest.

“Sharks R Us is dedicated to great barbecue, raising money for education, and having a great time with others in the Houston legal community,” says Childers. “For many, rodeo means great performers, bull riding, and fried Oreos, but for so many kids, it represents an opportunity to go to college.”