Jim Kronzer has been called the "first appellate guru" in Texas and was honored as the "Lawyer of the Century" by the Texas Trial Lawyers Association. He was involved in over 400 appeals and won the highest-stakes appeal in Texas history.

 

Kronzer was born in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1920. He was a 1943 graduate of the University of Texas Law School, where he was the Comments Editor of the Law Review. In 1954, he helped found the firm of Hill, Brown, Kronzer, Abraham, Watkins & Steely with former Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice John Hill and retired Fourteenth Court of Appeals Justice Curtis Brown. Kronzer later founded his own appellate firm, which may have been the first in Texas.

 

As President of the Houston Bar Association in 1965, Kronzer was instrumental in ending segregation of the bar. Until his Presidency, the HBA Constitution limited membership to "whites." His first item of business was to remove that clause because, as he said, racism was ridiculous.

 

Among Kronzer’s many appellate victories was one of the biggest in Texas history. Kronzer represented

Pennzoil on appeal in Texaco v. Pennzoil, in which a judgment of over $8 billion was affirmed.