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An Industry Trailblazer in
Information Technology
By Lynette Carrington
hen it comes to information technology (IT) and matters related to the computer industry, Peter Vogel is simply in a class by
himself. He became involved with computers when most of us had never heard of hard drive, RAM or the term megabyte. He has successfully combined his shrewd business background and technical know-how to deliver extremely targeted legal services to his clients as they relate to IT and the Internet.
“When I was an undergraduate at the University of Texas we had a required statistics course, the first half of the course was FORTRAN programming and I just fell in love with it. I thought it was the coolest thing,” said Vogel. “When I graduated, I got a job programming on IBM mainframes.”
“I worked as a programmer for a few years in Arlington, spent some time in the army, and ended up in Washington D.C. When I arrived, I got into law school and graduate
school, but selected graduate school thinking I’d do something that would only take a year or so.” He worked as a programmer at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, went to school in the evenings, and got his master’s in computer science. He then returned to the University of Texas to work toward his doctorate, but he wasn’t entirely happy. “I ended up going to law school, but I went to law school never intending to be a lawyer. I thought I would do computer consulting and the law degree would be like an MBA,” Vogel explained.
Vogel taught graduate IT classes throughout law school. “When I graduated, I moved back home to Dallas and did IT consulting for two years with a CPA firm. After a few years, my clients asked me to represent them as a lawyer, so I just hung up a shingle and I was a sole practitioner for 14 years,” he said. “I came to Gardere 22 years ago, but I’ve only ever represented buyers
Ken Hatley Photography