Casey Hartle

Casey Hartle represents upstream exploration and production companies — from single-well independents to some of the largest producers in the country — on acquisitions, divestitures, and daily operational matters that keep oil and gas assets moving. He brings a combination that’s hard to find in one lawyer: real field experience in how title actually gets made, paired with the discipline of running one of the region’s fastest-growing firms as Managing Partner. Clients bring him in when the details are unforgiving and they need a team that knows the ground it’s standing on.

Title opinions on ground that’s been carved up for a century

Casey has written and reviewed hundreds of title opinions across Texas, Oklahoma and North Dakota, working every major basin in Texas along the way. It’s one of the most demanding practice areas in the law, where one lawyer must master property law, contracts, torts, and wills and trusts all at once. This practice area typically takes years before a lawyer is trusted to do it alone. In a basin like the Permian, where a century of production has split ownership into thousands of fractional interests, a legal opinion must hold up in an area where well over $100 million of capital expenditure could be spent in development costs. There is no room to hedge the hard calls.

Due diligence on deals that make the trade press

Casey’s due diligence work has run alongside some of the industry’s largest deals. His experience includes the representation of a large, publicly traded E&Ps on the asset reviews tied to market-moving mergers.  He has also made a name for himself for his involvement in pre-sale due diligence on deals totaling as much as $12 billion. That kind of high-volume, high-stakes review is also why operators are consolidating their work around firms like Feighny Hartle instead of spreading it across a dozen or more smaller firms.

Dedicated teams, not a big hopper

As managing partner, Casey built FH’s staffing model around dedicated client teams.  Instead of rotating whoever’s available, a group assigned to a client stays with that client, learns its specific quirks, and turns out more consistent work because of it. When a prospective client’s real concern is capacity, his answer is direct: give us a month and FH will build the team. He also runs the firm lean on purpose.  With more than 70 people and a minimal layer of administrative staff between lawyers and the work, FH can provide the kind of hands-on attention at the top that lets the firm move fast.

Started as a landman, still thinks like one

Before he ever touched a transactional matter in oil & gas development, Casey worked as an independent petroleum landman, preparing runsheets by pulling every deed and document tied to a piece of land at the county courthouse. That fieldwork gave him a practical read on title that most lawyers never pick up sitting at a desk; he knows when a document is missing pages because of how a particular county files its records, or how an old deed book is organized. It’s also where he learned to chain title the hard way, tracing ownership back through decades of sales, deaths, and split inheritances before a single lease ever gets signed. When he moved into practicing law, that background gave him a head start that lawyers without landman experience spend years trying to close.