This is what my son says. Tarrant County courts and lawyers are typically friendly and collegial. Dallas County courts and lawyers are cut-throat and "Do unto others before they do it unto you."
Dallas lawyers are notorious state-wide for a cut-throat approach to litigation. In Austin, calling someone a "Dallas lawyer" used to be disparaging, and among some legal circles here remains so.
In my professional lifetime, I have seen the transformation of Austin/Travis County from a tight-knit legal community where a reputation for sharp dealing would follow a lawyer around forever (4 district judges; 2 county-court-at-law judges, in the 1970s) to a more cosmopolitan legal scene with a big enough number of trial judges that we have much less of an everyone-knows-everyone courthouse climate today. Some local lawyers have a "Dallas" practice style; some are more collegial. The former tend to be younger lawyers or transplants or both.
If one leaves Austin for surrounding small-population counties (not including Williamson (Round Rock, Georgetown, etc.), where law practice has always been a cage fight for non-local lawyers), for any matter that has a decent litigation budget I would strongly recommend a lawyer with a rough-and-tumble litigation style consulting a local lawyer, preferably one that the court clerks know by first name, and particularly before considering something like a discovery fight or (God forbid) a sanctions motion. I suppose this fits the "know your judge" suggestion for litigators.