As a partner at Kelly Hart & Hallman LLP, Katherine T. Hopkins brings dedication and extensive experience to serving her legal clients and helping improve the lives of people in the community.
Her law practice is focused on bankruptcy and business reorganization, representing individuals and businesses in debtor-creditor disputes. It’s an area of law that doesn’t draw many women attorneys, making her a rare exception.
“Bankruptcy has typically been a more male-dominated area of practice,” she said. “There are not a lot of female bankruptcy attorneys in Fort Worth.”
That Hopkins, 41, became an attorney and a bankruptcy lawyer was more by happenstance than an intentional journey.
Growing up an Ennis, a small town about 30 miles south of Dallas, she participated in theater in high school and dreamed of a career as an actress. As a result, she chose to attend Texas Christian University because of its renowned theater program.
By her sophomore year at TCU, she had a revelation.
“I realized ‘wow, this is really hard’,” she said. “There were so many people and so much talent. I recognized that I might be the most talented person and might not make it.
“I’m very risk averse and knew I could work my tail off and still struggle financially,“ she said.
So she made a practical decision not to switch majors and lose the credits she already earned. But she also started taking political science classes.
Taking her father’s advice, she decided to go the law school after graduating cum laude from TCU in 2006.
She chose St. Mary’s University School of Law in San Antonio, where she got involved in various activities and organizations, including Mock Court and Mark Trial.
“I discovered that I wanted to do litigation,” she said.
After her second year in law school, she was selected for an internship with Judge Ronald B. King, chief U.S. Bankruptcy Judge for the Western District of Texas.
“I needed a summer internship so I applied and got it,” she said. “On my first day in court, the judge let me sit to his side.”
She learned a lot about bankruptcy and realized, “this is very interesting; I want to do this.”
After graduating from law school in 2009, she applied and was awarded a clerkship with Judge King.
When the clerkship ended, she returned to the Dallas-Fort Worth area, where the North District of Texas was quickly becoming a hot spot for bankruptcy filings, which for many years were concentrated mainly in New York and Delaware, she said.
She was offered a job with a small law firm in Dallas.
“I really loved the vibe in Fort Worth but there wasn’t as much opportunity in Fort Worth as there was in Dallas,” she said.
Shortly before she was about to start the job, she received a call from Kelly Hart & Hallman with a job offer in Fort Worth. She started working for the firm in October 2010 and has been there ever since.
“It’s really been a great opportunity and great experience,” she said.
At Kelly Hart & Hallman, her specialties include asset acquisitions, divestitures, financing and restructurings, with a focus on bankruptcy and business reorganizations.
Within the firm’s Business Reorganization and Bankruptcy group, her clients include creditors, debtors, chapter 11 trustees, liquidating trustees and equity stakeholders. She handles cases in both federal and state courts.
Her restructuring cases spread across various industries, including retail, restaurant, manufacturing, banking, real estate, aviation, construction and energy production in the oil and gas industry.
She is involved with many professional organizations and serves on many boards and committees. Her affiliations include the Dallas-Fort Worth Association of Young Bankruptcy Lawyers; the John C. Ford American Inn of Court, the International Women’s Insolvency and Restructuring Confederation, the Tarrant County Bar Association and the Tarrant County Bar Foundation, the Tarrant County Young Lawyers Association and the DFW Association of Young Bankruptcy Lawyers.
She has held significant eadership positions with many or these organizations.
As a result of her professional achievements and community commitments, she received numerous awards and recognitions, including the prestigious Romina L. Mulloy-Bossio Achievement Award, which recognized her outstanding contributions as a young bankruptcy lawyer in 2016. She also was named the Tarrant County Young Lawyers Association’s Outstanding Young Lawyer of the Year in 2020, and is a 2022 Fort Worth Business Press 40 Under 40 award recipient. Other local publications have named her as one of Fort Worth’s best bankruptcy attorneys. In 2023, she was selected by the American Bankruptcy Institute as a 40 Under 40 honor recipient.
She is also deeply committee to community service through her involvement organizations such as the Women’s Council for Tarrant County CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates), the Trinity Collaborative and pro bono work with organizations such as Gatehouse in Grapevine, which support single mothers to overcome crisis, rebuild their lives and prepare for success.
“I’m very proud to be able to use my skill set to give back this way,” she said. “This is very important to me because there are a lot people who really need help.”
Despite her busy schedule, family time with her husband, Travis Hopkins, and her two young daughters, Maggie and Lucie, are a top priority.
The Hopkins’s share a passion for historic homes and currently live in a house that was built in 1901 as the first home in the Berkeley Place neighborhood in Fort Worth. The house is listed on the National Register of Places.
Among the home’s former occupants was W. Lee “Pappy” O’Daniel who rose to prominence as a popular radio show host and musician. He subsequently became the 34th governor of Texas and then served as the state’s junior U.S. senator.
“He lived in the house in the 1940s,” Hopkins said.
The Hopkins family formerly lived in a home built in 1928 in Fort Worth’s Rivercrest neighborhood. They moved to the bigger home in Berkeley to accommodate their growing family in 2023.