LEGAL EAGLES
Jim Eggleston —
The Grand Negotiator: Representing Texans Across The Globe
Jim Eggleston is at his desk on the third floor of his
impressive new office building, watching as work-
ers replace shingles on the Parker County Courthouse.
Occasionally, his steel blue eyes shift to the north, watch-
ing thunderclouds swirl toward Weatherford.
“Yeah, it’s a great view,” Eggleston said. “This is
going to be the place to watch all the new things that are
c oming to Weatherford.”
He wasn’t referring to weather conditions.
Eggleston has a dramatic vision for Weatherford, but
he’s not inclined to disclose specifics, yet.
“Weatherford is going to change,” he said. “We can
either go with it, or get run over by it.”
What Eggleston enjoys most about practicing law is,
“making deals.”
His favorite area of practice? “Large farms and
ranches, that is one of my board specialties. I have two,”
Eggleston said. “The other is in commercial real estate.
I am just a deal junky. Corporate real estate, large farms
and ranches, commercial real estate, and handle a lot of
startup businesses.”
Eggleston grew up in a small town in Kansas, the
proverbial “son of a preacher man.”
He earned his law degree from the University of
Kansas and passed the bar in 1980. These days he travels
extensively with his practice.
He doesn’t handle federal cases.
“‘Federal,’ implies I go to the courthouse,” Eggleston
laughs. “I never do that. So I do stuff all over the country
and Australia and New Zealand. I have done some work
in Europe in the past year. But, I practice primarily in
Texas and represent Texas-based people doing stuff else-
where in the country, and in the world.”
Eggleston first decided to become a lawyer after being
inspired by his high school government teacher.
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“I had a high school history professor named Charles
Peckover in Buhler, Kansas. He was creative and very
inspiring,” Eggleston said. “His class made me want to
go into law, politics and all that went with that. What’s
really cool is 20 years later I helped write some letters of
support for him to be Teacher of the Year. He affected a
lot of kids that way. I left his class knowing that I wanted
to do something pertaining to law… I always want to
meet, or exceed my clients’ expectations.”
After moving his practice to Weatherford a dozen
years ago, Eggleston found that he enjoyed working with
landowners on property transactions.
“It’s only in the last five, maybe eight years … that I’ve
found my niche,” Eggleston said. “I get to address a lot
of farm and ranch issues. I enjoy it. It’s just a better qual-
ity of people that own farms and ranches. Today, a lot
of elderly people are selling their farms or ranches. I am
doing a lot of real estate law.”
Eggleston has a passion for helping clients solve
complicated problems.
“The other thing I find most gratifying is when I have
people come in with some issue or life consequence.
I tell clients, “You only get to worry about this for 15
minutes a day,” Eggleston said. “I’ll worry about it the
rest of the time for you. A lot of people start crying at that
point. It’s a stress release for them.”
Eggleston doesn’t really have a case he considers to be
his most interesting.
“Deals are deals,” he said with a shrug. “The one that
had a great personal impact… I won’t name the client’s
name, but the family owns a large farm west of town
and an energy company had a saltwater pipeline that
spilled onto their property and began to spread in differ-
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