Keker, Van Nest & Peters has named R. James Slaughter as its new firmwide managing partner, effective June 1, the firm announced Monday.
Slaughter has been with the firm for 25 years, beginning as an associate in 2001. He is an experienced litigator whose clients include OpenAI, ride-sharing platform Lyft and video game developer and publisher Electronic Arts.
In addition to its work with technology litigation, Keker as a firm also represents the PGA tour, and maintains a robust sports litigation practice including representing Major League Baseball and the Pac-12 conference.
Slaughter succeeds previous managing partner Laurie Carr Mims, who held the role for three years and will remain with Keker, transitioning back to full-time litigation. Keker does not impose term limits on managing partners.
Mims oversaw the leadership of Keker during a time when the firm was particularly vocal in opposing the Trump administration, including in an October 2025 suit challenging the U.S. Social Security Administration’s sharing of taxpayer data with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and representing the town of Social Circle, Ga. in a lawsuit against ICE’s planned detention facility in the area. The firm was also an early publisher of an opinion piece in the New York Times decrying the Trump administration’s attacks on the legal industry. Up to 9% of Keker’s legal work is pro bono, Slaughter said, an initiative he aims to continue as managing partner.
“It might have been an unpopular position to take in the broader legal community,” Slaughter said. “You saw many law firms not willing to stand up that way, but it was never really a question for us and I was never more proud than when Laurie, John [Keker] Bob [Van Nest]and Elliot [Peters] put their names to that piece in the Times, and then we as a firm backed that up.”
The firm also remained publicly committed to its diversity and inclusion programs internally, issuing some $100,000 in scholarships to four second-year associates as part of its Diversity Scholars Program, which Slaughter said he plans to continue and expand.
“We are trial lawyers, and we stand in front of judges and juries who bring different life experiences and instincts and ways of hearing a story,” Slaughter said. “A great trial team needs to be able to see the case from different angles and needs to be able to present, and you never know who a judge or a jury is going to connect with, and so this is important, to continue to invest in the pipeline of people to become so we have a diverse bar.”
Concurrent with the management partner change, Keker also appointed a new general counsel. Steven Ragland, the firm’s associate general counsel for the past three years, will succeed general counsel Jan Little, who will remain with the firm and transition back in to private practice full-time.
The firm remains dedicated to its one-office model but will look to expand its ranks of litigators, Slaughter said. “All we do is litigation, and from our viewpoint, that one office model matters,” Slaughter told Law.com. “It means that the people know each other and trust each other. We work across cases in a way that I think is harder to collaborate and replicate when you have multiple offices and practice areas.”
During Mims’ tenure, the firm grew to about 140 lawyers, up from 40 when Slaughter joined the firm a quarter century prior. “We have grown, but we’ve never chased scale,” he said. “Excellence is our strategy. … And so when you think about 40 lawyers to 140 over 25 years, it’s a large number in absolute terms, but it’s really very modest year over year,” he said, adding he’d describe the firm’s growth as “organic and disciplined.”
Slaughter framed the executive appointment at Keker as “a change in leadership, not a change in identity.”
“Our model is going to remain a low-leverage model, and I’m excited about that,” he added. “John, Bob and Elliot built a firm around excellence and independence and trust, and the task now is to preserve that culture while continuing to compete at the highest level, and to give the younger generation that space and ability and tools to do that.”
Reprinted with permission from the June 1, 2026, edition of the LAW.COM © 2026 ALM Global Properties, LLC. All rights reserved. Further duplication without permission is prohibited, contact 877-256-2472 or asset-and-logo-licensing@alm.com.
