March 9, 2023 | By Matthew Kellogg
McCathern, Shokouhi, Evans, Grinke is excited to announce that experienced corporate services and business lawyer Tarig Anani has joined the firm’s Dallas office as a Partner. Tarig brings three decades of specialized counsel to the firm and is already having a positive impact on McCathern clients.
Tarig’s experience includes working as an outside General Counsel for small and medium-sized businesses, particularly in the software and SaaS industries, and as counsel to private equity firms prior to acquisitions. He also has extensive experience assisting American businesses seeking to do business in the Middle East and vice versa. Tarig has also served in various C-level roles with full P&L responsibility while concurrently acting as General Counsel, thus giving him exceptional insight into the needs of corporate clients to balance business opportunities with legal risk management.
Tarig earned a J.D. from The University of Houston and an MBA from Rice University before earning a Master of Science of Law degree at Stanford Law School. He then began his career with the corporate law department at the New York law firm Curtis, Mallet-Prevost, Colt & Mosle working on cross-border M&A deals and regulatory compliance before joining the software firm SAP, where he was VP & General Counsel of SAP Middle East.
“I’m glad I started my legal career in at Curtis, where I had the privilege of working with the Managing Partner, George Kahale, who instilled in me certain habits of providing clients with the utmost quality of legal service I could deliver, a strong work ethic and a focus on always putting the client first”, Tarig said.
Tarig later joined the oil & gas software firm P2 Energy Solutions as General Counsel, where he was fundamental in the business’s growth through mergers and acquisitions and eventually took on the role of COO and led the company’s sale to Vista Equity Partners in 2008.
“I learned so much in the next phase of my career as a General Counsel to SAP Middle East and P2 Energy Solutions, having to weigh business growth and opportunities against reducing potential liabilities,” Tarig said. “I wore the lawyer hat and was responsible for reducing risk, but I also wore various C-level hats with ultimate responsibility to increase profits. While I continued to do M&A deals much like I had at Curtis, this time I had to “eat my own cooking” and live with the results of those acquisitions and actually integrate those companies at a business level.”
Following his time with SAP and P2, Tarig led his own legal practice, Anani Law Firm, until the recent move to McCathern.
“When I first met Arnold Shokouhi, we hit it off immediately,” Tarig said. “While many Managing Partners would have sought out a more specialized corporate counsel to head up the corporate transactional legal department, Arnold appreciated my varied background and recognized the potential my experience actually running businesses would add to my advice to business clients.”
In his brief time at McCathern, Tarig is already impressed with the firm. “I appreciate the just-right size of McCathern, and I can honestly say that I really like everyone I work with here, which I think is true in very few firms. The quality of the lawyers at McCathern is second to none, and Levi McCathern has built a firm where there is a group of people you would actually want to hang out with after work. Amazingly, the clients have all been equally as genuinely friendly. So, if you have to work hard, this is a great place to do it. The people here will support your efforts at achieving your best.”
McCathern welcomes Tarig to the firm and looks forward to the many ways he will embody our mission of Improving People’s Lives.