Whitehouse, Texas may be on the map as the hometown of Super Bowl Champion Patrick Mahomes but it’s also the roots of another champion, proven first-chair trial lawyer Mary-Olga (“Mo”) Lovett. (She has known Patrick since he was five and loves him very much!) Mo is a fierce advocate for a wide range of national and global clients in bet-the-company litigation.  She is respected by peers, opponents, and judges alike.  As a revered Plaintiff’s lawyer and opponent once said about her, “She fights like hell, but she fights fair.”

A first-generation American on her mother’s side and a sixth-generation Texan on her father’s, Mo is proud to be the first lawyer in her family. She received her B.A. from Stephen F. Austin State University (’90, Political Science) and her J.D. from South Texas College of Law, as it was then called. The 2021 recipient of the Distinguished Alumni Award, Mo recognizes her alma mater as the place where her dreams as a young law student were nurtured and developed and credits the skills she developed there with making her dominant in courtrooms across the country. She also was recently at a global law firm for 18 years; when she departed there in July, 2023, she was the Senior Vice President and ranking woman in a Firm of 2650 lawyers with 5,000 employees in 47 offices around the world.  But what she’d like you to know is that while she had a lot of “Double Ivies” reporting to her at her prior firm, she learned EVERYTHING she needed to know at South Texas College of Law, as it was then called, from T. Gerald Treece, and his then assistant, Robert L. Galloway.  Mo now works for the 2023 American Lawyer “Law Firm of the Year,” King & Spalding.  On February 21, 2024, the American Lawyer described Mo’s move from her prior firm to King & Spalding as “one of the top 25 lateral moves of the year.”  She is in awe of her Firm.

From small town to big city, Mo has nearly 30 years of experience, having tried more than 50 cases with more than $100 billion at stake. Licensed in Texas and New York, Mo’s cases involve a wide variety of complex legal issues, including patent infringement, trademark infringement, theft of trades secrets, commercial disputes, class actions, employment litigation, and product liability matters all over the country in both state and federal courts.  She represented Lady A (formerly known as Lady Antebellum) in the fight for their name.  She represented JP Morgan Chase when it was accused, nationwide, of discriminating against Black customers.  She successfully defended Microsoft, Inc. in a $43 billion trademark infringement matter.  She successfully defended a $454 million hedge fund in New York State Court (called the “Supreme Court” there, y’all.) She also was hired by bp to be their lead trial counsel in a case in Cameron Parrish, Louisiana with $50 billion in exposure – bp (formerly British Petroleum, like Mo was formerly Mary-Olga) was being sued by the State of Louisiana and 42 of its parishes for “shrinking the State of Louisiana.”  She also successfully represented R.J. Reynolds against the State of Texas in a 2019-2021 war in the Eastern District of Texas which was a blatant attempt by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to retrade the landmark 1998 Texas Tobacco Settlement. She has been lead counsel in more than 75 patent cases in the Eastern District of Texas and has successfully tried many patent cases there on both sides of the docket, beginning in 2010.  From 2019 to 2023, she represented Mattel, Inc. and Fisher-Price Inc. as co-lead counsel in cases related to alleged infant deaths in the Rock ‘n’ Play Sleeper.

Named a “Top Mentor” by the Texas Lawyer in 2020, Mo is passionate about placing women and diverse lawyers in first-chair roles, particularly in high-profile cases, and builds diverse teams to litigate every case she handles. She continues to support “Putting the ‘I’ in Imposter Syndrome” (a phrase which she is trademarking), and in 2020, The Houston Chronicle called her “the Houston attorney pushing to put more women in the courtroom.” Chambers USAranks Mo as a Band 1 Trial Lawyer. Mo is currently listed as one of the Top 100 Attorneys in Houston and one of the Top 50 Women Lawyers in Texas by Super Lawyers Magazine/Texas Monthly for multiple years. She has also been recognized as one of the Top 100 Lawyers in Texas and received the “Best in Patent” award from Euromoney’s Guide to Women in Business Law in 2017. She is a 17-year member and Senior Life Fellow of the American Board of Trial Advocates, the qualifications for which require a minimum of 20 first-chair jury trials to verdict and peer election. She has been listed in the Legal 500 in multiple years and is listed this year in the LawDragon 500 in four separate categories:  IP (Patent and Trademark), Commercial Litigation, Product Liability, and Class Actions.

While at South Texas College of Law, Mo became the first person in history to hold the titles of Champion at both the National Moot Court Competition (New York City Bar Association), (’93-’94) and the ABA’s National Appellate Advocacy Competition (’93).  To the best of her knowledge, no one from any law school has done that since. 

As a practicing Greek Orthodox Christian, Mo does her best to live her life by the first four Gospels of the New Testament, although she loves and respects her friends of ALL religions and those who are atheist or agnostic.  As a trial lawyer, she lives her life according to the Rules of Ethics and the Seventh Amendment of the United States Constitution. She also broke her ankle in spinning class (total klutz) and is still looking for her “sport.”  Best of all, she met her amazing, wonderful husband at South Texas College of Law (as it was then called) in 1990.  They have three sons, two of whom are very fancy Ivy Leaguers and one of whom went to A&M.  Neither her mother nor her children are remotely impressed by her. She can’t believe she gets to speak at a CLE with her heroes Eva Guzman, David Medina, and Dan Cogdell – but she and Dan don’t see eye to eye on General Paxton.