Long before Charles “Chip” Babcock litigated for the likes of Oprah Winfrey, Dr. Phil, Jerry Jones and Mark Cuban, his vocation was relatively pedestrian.
Sports writer.
Babcock, 76, has come a long way from early 1970s Philadelphia Inquirer scribe to renowned Dallas attorney, but his extensive sports roots uniquely qualify him as the Mavericks’ lead counsel in their legal squabble with the Stars.
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He even got on ESPN’s SportsCenter as the Texas Rangers’ attorney during the mid-1990s Major League Baseball strike. Fans filed multiple lawsuits, arguing the Rangers’ use of replacement players made them an inferior product.
“On the third one, they had invited a bunch of TV stations,” Babcock recalls. “When I walked out of the courtroom they asked for comment and I said: ‘Well, they’ve tried three times now. And in baseball, as we know, three strikes and you’re out.’”
Babcock, fellow firm partner Chris Bankler and associate Sarah Starr are representing the Mavericks on behalf of Jackson Walker, Texas’ largest law firm with about 550 attorneys.
Babcock says he doesn’t recall previously facing the Stars’ legal firm, Winstead, or its lead attorney Joshua Sandler, though he has co-counseled on cases with Winstead.
At issue is whether the Stars, as the Mavericks contend, breached their American Airlines Center lease by having their primary headquarters outside Dallas city limits during most of the past quarter-century.
The franchises’ legal teams are scheduled for mediation on Friday. If there’s no resolution, summary judgement motions are scheduled to heard on March 6 before Texas Business Court Judge Bill Whitehill. If the case survives that and subsequent hearings, a trial is scheduled for May 11.
Chip Babcock walked into the federal courthouse in Texarkana on July 22, 2024. Testimony occurred in Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones’ countersuit against Alexandra Davis, who alleged she is his biological daughter. The suit ended when an agreement was reached between Jones and the Davises for dismissal.
Jason Janik / Special Contributor
Attorney to the stars
Local sports teams suing one another is provocative, but not as sensational as those six weeks in 1998, when Babcock successfully defended Winfrey in Amarillo, where cattlemen brought suit after her TV show’s episode about mad cow disease.
Or when Babcock traveled to California and successfully defended Cuban after his 2007 comments on a Bay Area radio show induced a defamation suit from former Mavericks coach Don Nelson.
Or, more recently, when Babcock from 2022-2024 defended Jones in paternity and breach of contract lawsuits.
Not to name-drop, but it’s a matter of record that Babcock has represented Warren Buffett, Diane Sawyer, Bill O’Reilly, CNN, George W. Bush (as Rangers owner, before his presidency) and the aforementioned Phil McGraw (multiple times).
Clearly Brooklyn-born Babcock was wise to pivot from sports writing. He’d worked for the Miami Herald in high school and college summer breaks from Brown University before his 1971 graduation. He’d also been sports director of Brown’s campus radio station.
While covering high school and college sports at The Inquirer, he fortuitously took law courses part time “because of a girl.” His epiphany occurred in June 1973, when The Inquirer’s Eagles writer was on vacation and Babcock got dispatched to a news conference at Veterans Stadium.
The Eagles had traded for 32-year-old Rams quarterback Roman Gabriel. Babcock, 23, found himself among a semicircle of reporters in their 40s who were hanging on Gabriel’s every syllable.
“I sort of had one of these out-of-body experiences,” Babcock said. “I said to myself, ‘Maybe I should look into something else.’”
Upon his 1976 graduation from Boston University law school, Babcock applied for judicial clerkships in the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which at the time covered his home state of Florida and Texas.
A former BU classmate recommended a pair of federal judges in Dallas who were unusually young (40s) and “sports fanatics, so you would love these guys.”
Both judges interviewed Babcock in Dallas. Judge Robert W. Porter later told Babcock he and the other judge flipped a coin to determine who would hire him. Porter prevailed. Or did he?
“They never told me who lost the flip,” Babcock said.
In September 1978 he joined Jackson Walker, which at the time represented the Dallas Times Herald and KDFW-TV (Channel 4).
“So I walked into a ready-made media practice,” he said. “The partner at the firm who was doing that work didn’t really care for it. The minute I came in, he walked down with a bunch of files and said, ‘Here, I understand you want to do media work.’”
He soon collected clients of his own. One of them, California’s Transamerican Press, had a reporter who in 1980 was ordered by a Texas judge to reveal a confidential source in a libel case.
Second-year associate Babcock won the appeal, a landmark ruling that established qualified First Amendment privilege for reporters in civil libel cases.
Full disclosure: Among his numerous media cases, Babcock successfully represented The Dallas Morning News in a 2004 defamation suit brought by restaurant chain owner Phil Romano.
‘Oprah’s attorney’
Case by case, Babcock has forged a career that in 2010 compelled the magazine Texas Lawyer to count him among the state’s greatest attorneys of the past quarter-century.
But of course he’s primarily known as “Oprah’s attorney.” Funny thing is, Babcock was in the middle of a contentious eight-week trial and had no interest in Winfrey’s case when her general counsel first reached out in late 1997.
Talk show host Oprah Winfrey showed her joy after a jury ruled in her favor in Amarillo on Thursday, Feb. 26, 1998. Winfrey had been sued by Texas cattlemen for allegedly defaming the beef industry in one of her shows. Lawyer Chip Babcock is to the left of Winfrey.
LM OTERO / AP
“I came back from court and there was this letter on my desk, attaching a lawsuit,” he said. “It said, ‘We’d like you to represent us in this case that’s been filed in Amarillo.’
“My initial reaction was, ‘This is the stupidest lawsuit I’ve ever read about in my life.’ So I padded around the corner to one of my partners’ office and said, ‘Hey, would you like to work on this Oprah Winfrey case?’”
Eighteen months later, Babcock found himself sharing an Amarillo bed and breakfast with Winfrey; her dog walker; her chef; the president of her company; her executive producer; and “Dr. Phil, when he was just plain ol’ Phil.”
For nearly two months, Babcock watched Winfrey go for daily 6 a.m. runs; return for trial prep; go to the courthouse; then tape her show at Amarillo’s Little Theater; then go back to the bed and breakfast at 8 p.m. for more trial prep.
“Incredible drive,” he said of Winfrey. “And delightful. Funny. Smart. Intuitive. Exactly in private as she appears in public.”
More than a quarter-century later they remain friends. He’s represented her in multiple cases and smaller legal matters. And he’s represented McGraw numerous times, most recently in a 2025 bankruptcy case involving his media company.
Babcock shows no signs, or inclination, of slowing. He says he billed 2,300 hours last year. That’s the equivalent of 287½ eight-hour days.
Mavericks-Stars, if it makes it to May 11, won’t be the trial of the century or Oprah-in-Amarillo level, but it’s no accident the Mavericks have a sports writer-turned-titan in their legal corner.
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