Anderson M. Simmons: A Journey Through Law & Innovation
Anderson M. Simmons is an attorney licensed to practice law in Texas and California (currently inactive status in California). After high school, he completed an electronics technician program affiliated with Texas A&M. While attending college part-time, he worked full-time as an electronic technician at the Fusion Research Center at The University of Texas at Austin, where he designed and built a high-speed remote-control system used on the university’s experimental nuclear fusion reactor. After completing that project, he enrolled full-time at The University, where he obtained his B.A. in 1989. From 1990 to 1992, he was a paralegal at Clark, Thomas & Winters in Austin, TX. While there, he used his electronics knowledge to develop a successful technical defense for the first automotive airbag products liability lawsuit in Texas. Encouraged by mentors at that firm to become an attorney, he left the firm in 1992 to begin law school.
He graduated cum laude from Case Western Reserve University School of Law in May 1995. He was a full-time law clerk at the City of Cleveland Law Department during the summers of his first and second years, and he also clerked with them after class while attending law school during his second year. He spent his third year as a visiting law student at Southwest School of Law in Los Angeles, where he was the First Place Winner of the California Bankruptcy Journal Joseph Bernfeld Essay Competition, while also clerking part-time with the Korean American law firm of Chang & Lim.
He was licensed in California in November 1995 and joined the boutique insurance defense firm of Sims, Morrow & Manning in Newport Beach, California, as an associate, where he worked on construction defect litigation and defended other attorneys against claims of legal malpractice. In 1997, he earned the second-highest score on the Texas Bar Exam and rejoined Clark, Thomas & Winters, P.C. as an associate, where he continued defending automobile makers in product liability cases throughout Texas. In 2002, he became general counsel for Southwestern Recreational Industries, Inc, in Leander, Texas, where he handled a wide variety of litigation and transactional matters, including contracts, labor and employment, OSHA, real estate, and intellectual property.
In 2003, he started a solo practice in Austin, Texas, concentrating on but not limited to commercial and consumer litigation. He has handled lawsuits in state and federal court ranging from prosecution of securities fraud (with a seven-figure settlement), personal injury, deceptive trade practices act, construction litigation, partnership disputes, and dram shop litigation. Representative clients include construction companies, advertising agencies, food manufacturing companies, bar & restaurant groups, high-tech entrepreneurs, investors, other law firms, and consumers. He has defended clients in administrative matters such as OSHA proceedings and trademark disputes. He handles a wide variety of transactional matters ranging from business formation, contracts, residential & commercial real estate, and intellectual property.
In addition to his solo practice, he is currently Of Counsel to Century Law Firm, a multistate consumer debt relief law firm, assisting them with their high-volume Texas docket.
He has conducted jury trials to verdict and handles the occasional appeal, most recently Samara Portfolio Mgmt., LLC v. Zargari, No. 13-17-00049-CV, 2018 WL 2979847 (Tex. App.—Corpus Christi-Edinburg, June 14, 2018, pet. denied). Responding to a desperate need from consumers who were injured during the Great Recession, he began defending consumer debtors in 2007 and, for the next decade, defeated several hundred debt purchaser lawsuits with dismissals or take nothing judgments before ever losing a debt purchaser case, as well as bringing Fair Debt Collection Practices Act claims when warranted, including a five-figure confidential settlement against a debt collector who improperly threatened a consumer with jail.
His pro bono work includes free representation of veterans, their spouses, and disabled persons in debt collection defense.
He is a member of the Texas Bar Foundation and Austin Bar Association.
His hobbies include bikepacking, developing and maintaining the nature trails in his neighborhood, old vintage vacuum tube audio equipment, and playing guitar (badly).