An experienced first-chair trial lawyer, Denise Scofield guides clients through some of their most serious business challenges. Denise uses her extensive knowledge of her clients’ industries to help them determine the best outcome possible and to execute a plan to deliver it. She is especially skilled at protecting her clients at the earliest stages of a crisis. By understanding what her clients will consider to be a win, Denise crafts courtroom strategies with those results in mind.

Denise represents clients facing commercial, environmental, and mass-tort disputes. Thanks to her deep understanding of the energy and petrochemical industries—including the regulatory and market pressures they face—clients across all facets of those industries seek out Denise as a trusted adviser. She has experience on both sides of the docket and is adept at working with her clients to determine whether aggressive litigation or guided resolution is in their best interest.

Denise’s unique and informed perspective comes from her decades of industry experience. She worked in-house to assist a major oil and gas client take on a significant amount of litigation after a large acquisition. She co-managed an oilfield-services client’s large portfolio of litigation matters for many years, serving as lead counsel on cases involving commercial, environmental, mass and toxic tort, products and premises liability, and trade-secret allegations pending in courts across the country. Denise has also served as national and regional coordinating counsel for clients facing environmental and mass-tort litigation, often leading large teams to accomplish her clients’ goals. Because of these experiences, Denise understands the bottom-line impact of litigation for her clients and keeps those financial implications in mind, developing realistic cost estimates to ensure there are no surprises.

Denise has secured significant wins in critical cases, both through trial and motion practice and on appeal. She successfully tried Phase One of the Deepwater Horizon litigation on behalf of an oilfield-services client, winning her client’s dismissal at the close of the plaintiffs’ case. She recently defeated a mass-tort case involving hexavalent chromium brought to national attention by Erin Brockovich. And she won a take-nothing judgment in a matter involving sophisticated deepwater well equipment that had industry-wide implications. Her creativity and special awareness of indemnity provisions and non-monetary settlement options that can bring a case to a less costly resolution frequently result in favorable outcomes for her clients outside of the courtroom.

Before joining O’Melveny, Denise was a partner at an international law firm, where she served as head of the Houston Litigation Practice.