Winstead PC: Before the first brick

In Gallatin, Tennessee, a real estate project comes with a road problem. Station Camp is planned to combine retail, medical offices and several kinds of housing. Those uses need infrastructure, including improvements at Big Station Camp Boulevard and State Route 386. Before the shops can welcome customers, somebody must arrange how that supporting work gets paid for. Enter the lawyers.

In March 2026, Winstead PC announced that it had helped developer Merus establish Tennessee’s first Infrastructure Development District under the state’s 2025 act. The mechanism links infrastructure financing to assessments on the project’s land. It is an unglamorous detail with considerable consequences: an agreement about a road can help determine whether the neighborhood around it becomes possible.

One project. Several legal languages.

Winstead’s role in Gallatin was specific. Nashville shareholder Keith Randall worked with Merus’s Patrick Poole and DPFG’s Rick Rosenberg on the petition to create the district. The announcement describes bond financing secured by land assessments, without an obligation for the city or its general taxpayers. Merus and Gallatin had collaborated for nearly two years. Establishing the district was a financing milestone; it did not mean the development was finished.

The proposed mix included nearly 133,000 square feet of retail and medical offices, plus senior housing, single-family homes, townhomes and apartments. This is where a business law firm becomes useful in a less obvious way. The work crosses boundaries: private ownership meets public infrastructure; construction meets financing. Each specialist has a vocabulary. The client needs an arrangement all of them can use.

The computer company in the backstory

Winstead began in Dallas in 1973 with Pete Winstead, Bill Sechrest and Chuck McGuire. The original name put all three on the door: Winstead, McGuire & Sechrest. Its early identity was transactional. A young company’s questions about ownership, tax and financing belonged naturally in that practice.

One of those companies was Dell. Winstead represented the computer maker when it went public in 1988. Pete Winstead had moved to Austin the previous year to open the firm’s office there. His career also extended into public infrastructure: in 1997, Governor George W. Bush appointed him the first chair of the Texas Turnpike Authority. Computers and toll roads are an unusual pairing. Both belong in a career spent working around businesses, capital and government.

A practice shaped like a development

Today, Winstead’s real estate services extend through purchases, equity investments, financing, development, leasing and sales. Related teams handle land use, construction, environmental questions and tax. For a developer, the attraction is practical: the legal issue changes as a project advances, and advice given at one stage can affect the next.

There is outside evidence for this concentration. Chambers’ 2026 rankings place Winstead in Band 1 for Texas real estate and for construction in both Texas and Tennessee. Other Texas firms compete for similar work, including Jackson Walker and Vinson & Elkins. The distinction to examine is the particular team’s experience with a client’s project, jurisdiction and financing structure. A firmwide reputation only begins that conversation.

Then there are the freighters

Real estate does not explain the whole business. In November 2022, Winstead announced its representation of Hawaiian Airlines in negotiating an air transportation services agreement with Amazon. The agreement called for an initial ten Airbus A330-300 freighters and an eight-year initial term, with extension provisions. Winstead represented the airline; Amazon was the counterparty.

The firm also offers corporate and securities advice, intellectual property work, commercial litigation, healthcare counsel and wealth planning. Its customers range from companies and financial institutions to universities, governments and individuals. What connects these assignments is a need for specialized legal judgment about a transaction, an operating business or a dispute.

Buy a plan before buying hours

Winstead earns fees for that judgment and representation. Its published Alternative Pricing Arrangements process asks clients and lawyers to discuss objectives, staffing, budget forecasts, early assessment and feedback. For a prospective client, this suggests a concrete starting point: describe the intended result, identify the decisions required and agree who will do the work.

Borrow that discipline even if you never hire the firm. Ask which assumptions the budget depends on, what would change the scope and when you will hear about a developing problem. For a property transaction, ask who coordinates the land use lawyer with the financing and construction teams. For a dispute, ask what an early assessment will cover. The aim is to make responsibility visible before the file fills with documents.

“We accomplish more together than we could alone”Winstead’s published core values

The service idea extends into the firm’s community commitments: pro bono representation for individuals and nonprofits, charitable fundraising and board service. There is a business education strand, too. In 2021, Winstead renewed its role advising startups in MassChallenge’s Texas programs, with lawyers providing curriculum and mentoring, including intellectual property guidance. That documented partnership shows another use for specialist knowledge: helping founders frame legal questions while their companies are still taking shape.

That coordination has limits. An integrated team makes sense when several legal disciplines affect the same outcome. A narrowly defined local matter may call for a smaller engagement. Even a carefully structured development still needs viable economics, approvals and counterparties willing to proceed. Legal work can organize those dependencies; it cannot make them disappear.

Following the places clients build

Winstead has applied an efficiency argument to its own surroundings. Its 2012 Dallas relocation cut occupied space from roughly 200,000 to 130,000 square feet. The builder describes collaborative rooms alongside individual offices. The change replaced a familiar measure of professional status, floor space, with a more practical question about how people use it.

Expansion now follows another map. In April 2026, Winstead opened Atlanta with seven attorneys, including four shareholders, focused on real estate and related work. In September, former Dinerstein Companies general counsel McCall Grimes joined Houston. These moves add people who understand the decisions developers face. For clients, that is the test of the whole enterprise: whether the lawyer understands what must happen before the first brick.