FAR LEFT: Berrelez with his mom and dad at his
graduation from Yale
MIDDLE: Teodoro Berrelez, now 5, at 7 months old
with a photo of his namesake great-great-grandfather,
a janitor who had a school named in his honor
RIGHT: Quarterback Manuel Berrelez captured in
action by Alex Azocar, a photographer for the high
school yearbook
Berrelez met Vinson & Elkins’ Dallas
managing partner John Wander in 2009
at a casual breakfast meeting, during
the recession. “We weren’t looking for
any mid-level lateral associates, but I
subscribe to the view that you always
hire talent, especially if it’s hardworking,”
Wander says.
Initially, it didn’t seem that way. The
cards Berrelez laid out on the table were
that he was starting a family and wanted
to slow down a little. For a second, Wander
thought: Uh-oh. “Then he said to me, ‘I
billed 2,700 hours last year; I'd like to get
it down to around 2,500.’ We were right to
hire him,” says Wander. “Manuel is a real
pillar for the future.”
During his eight years at V&E, located
in the heart of the Dallas arts district,
Berrelez has focused on fraud and fiduciary
duty claims, contract disputes, banking
regulatory matters, securities litigation
and other business torts. But since 2013,
when he won a case defending a banker
against the Office of the Comptroller of the
Currency (OCC), Berrelez has specialized
in representing financial institutions and
their directors against federal and state
regulators. “I can relate to clients who
need my help. I’ve been in their shoes, and
The banker in that case was Patrick
Adams, who founded T Bank in Dallas in
2004. The OCC charged him with unsafe
and unsound banking practices. His career
in banking was on the line when he hired
V&E, which assigned Berrelez.
“I believed in my client and I felt he
was being picked on,” says Berrelez, who
seized on the opportunity to present his
defense on the first day of the trial, when
the government’s attorneys called Adams
as their second witness. “I kept him on the
stand for two days,” Berrelez recalls.
The feds appealed, and the comptroller
ruled that, essentially, the judge had
applied a wrong legal standard, Berrelez
says. But the government dropped the
charges. “I think they were just trying to
make an example out of him, and it didn’t
work,” says Berrelez, who draws an unlikely
parallel to his own life, growing up.
“I saw myself in Patrick Adams’ shoes,”
Berrelez says. “He was in danger of losing
everything he had worked so hard for.”
A star quarterback and salutatorian of his
class in high school, Berrelez had wanted to
attend Yale ever since a couple of graduates
from the Ivy League school had spoken at
his middle school. He was recruited by the
university and offered a scholarship based
on his grades and financial need (Yale
doesn’t offer athletic scholarships).
Then trouble: Berrelez was arrested
on a charge of criminal trespass. It was
a misunderstanding, but during the
college application process it’s not good
to have a police record of any kind. Yale
was especially interested in Berrelez as
a student-athlete, with recruiter Kevin
Ronalds later telling the San Antonio
Express News, “When I got back from Texas,
I told some of the coaches that Manuel will
be the governor of Texas someday.”
But Ronalds had not seen Berrelez in
handcuffs a few months earlier, led through
the crowd at his high school football field by
police officers who’d been called by the high
school principal.
The trouble started the week before
the homecoming game. His team had an
away game, so Berrelez parked his truck
at the school and took the bus with the
team. “When we got back, I discovered
that my truck had been vandalized,” he
says. It had been egged and keyed. “The
word got around school on Monday who
had done it, so I confronted him and there
was an altercation.” The fistfight in the
hallway got both students suspended for
a week, which meant Berrelez couldn’t
play the next game. He wasn’t even
supposed to set foot on school property.
But Berrelez says he worked out an
agreement with the vice principal so he
could watch the game from the stands in
street clothes—but the principal said the
vice principal lacked the authority to make
an exception.
“My mother was so distraught,” he
recalls. “We hired a lawyer from Carrizo
Springs named Manuel Montez, and as he
walked us through the process, you could
feel the relief. My family had a voice.”
