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Asked & Answered with A&O Shearman’s Billy Marsh: Five Generations of Practicing Law - In this edition of Asked & Answered, A&O Shearman partner Billy Marsh discusses trends he’s seeing in shareholder, securities and mass tort litigation. He also talks about what it was like as a first-year associate to defend the NFL against fraud claims brought by a group of fans. January 7, 2026Two Tapped by President Trump for Bench in WDTX - Andrew Davis, an Austin litigator who had served as a staffer on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, and Judge Chris Wolfe, a Tarrant County trial judge since 2018, have been named to federal bench vacancies in Austin and Waco. January 7, 2026
Balch & Bingham Nearly Doubles Austin Presence with Duggins Wren Mann & Romero - Balch Managing Partner Stan Blanton said the firm “could not have found another group of lawyers who offer the expertise and talent” of Duggins Wren Mann & Romero, particularly in the electricity and gas sectors. January 6, 2026
Top 10 White-Collar Crime Cases of 2025 - Healthcare fraud prosecutions, many stemming from the pandemic, stood out among the biggest white-collar cases in Texas last year. January 6, 2026
Litigation Roundup: Lawyer Who Leaked Accused Priest’s Name to Reporter Can’t Shake $400K Sanction - In this edition of Litigation Roundup, a divided Fifth Circuit panel revives an excessive force lawsuit against a Lake Worth officer stemming from a 2021 fatal shooting, with the judges sharply criticizing each other in their opinions, and a husband and wife in Fort Worth admit guilt in a custom home building scam that defrauded 40 victims out of about $4.8 million. January 5, 2026
Agency Recommends $9.6M in Fines for Houston-based Midstream for 2022 Deepwater Spill - The U.S. Department of Transportation announced Monday that it is recommending a fine of more than $9.6 million against a Houston-based company for a November 2023 deepwater oil spill off the coast of Louisiana. The penalty is the result of an investigation by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safe Administration and the recommended levy of $9,622,054 is described as the "largest civil penalty ever proposed" by the agency. January 5, 2026
Vistra Buys Cogentrix Energy in Deal Valued at About $4B - Vistra Corp. said Monday that it acquired Cogentrix Energy for about $2.3 billion cash, about $925 million in common shares and the assumption of $1.5 billion of debt. Vistra used Latham & Watkins, Sidley Austin and Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton as outside legal counsel. King & Spalding advised Cogentrix. January 5, 2026
Biggest Texas Verdicts of 2025 - Billions of dollars were awarded by juries in Texas last year in personal injury and patent infringement trials. The largest damage awards were doled out in Bexar and Harris counties. January 5, 2026
The Key Deals of 2025: Business-As-Usual, With a Mona Lisa Smile - The undisputed dealmaker of the year 2025 was artificial intelligence.
Its needs, whether for infrastructure, software, data, cooling, tubing for cooling, electrical parts, real estate or any other basic or specialized situation, seemed to play a role, directly or indirectly, in nearly every deal reported to The Texas Lawbook this year.
Allen Pusey and Jason Philyaw sifted through the more than 1,200 M&A transactions that have passed across our desks over the last 12 months to pick the most significant deals from last year. January 4, 2026
Its needs, whether for infrastructure, software, data, cooling, tubing for cooling, electrical parts, real estate or any other basic or specialized situation, seemed to play a role, directly or indirectly, in nearly every deal reported to The Texas Lawbook this year.
Allen Pusey and Jason Philyaw sifted through the more than 1,200 M&A transactions that have passed across our desks over the last 12 months to pick the most significant deals from last year. January 4, 2026
Centerpiece
Introducing Charles Schwab GC Peter Morgan — An Exclusive Q&A with The Texas Lawbook - Charles Schwab's relocation of its global headquarters, including its 150-member corporate legal department, from San Francisco to a 70-acre campus in Westlake’s Circle T Ranch development is complete, and by all accounts, the transition has been hugely successful. The move required a significant amount of infrastructure work by the legal department for Schwab, a multinational financial services company with more than 32,000 employees, $11 trillion in assets under management and a market cap of $178 billion.
“The move itself was real legal work, including banking charter conversions and building new relationships with Texas regulators and the Dallas Fed, and we found the same constructive, execution-oriented approach throughout,” Schwab General Counsel Peter Morgan told The Texas Lawbook in an exclusive interview.
Morgan said Schwab's hiring of two Dallas prominent lawyers — Winstead shareholder Michael O’Neal and Jones Day partner and former U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Regional Director Shamoil Shipchandler — were critical parts of the transition. In the interview, Morgan discusses the Texas legal and business markets and the challenges ahead. January 7, 2026
Schwab Chief Counsel Shamoil Shipchandler ‘Wouldn’t Trade Places with Anyone’ - Shamoil Shipchandler scored landmark successes as a high-profile white-collar Texas prosecutor and the SEC’s top corporate cop pursuing financial criminals such as self-proclaimed frack master Christopher Faulkner and top executives at AriseBank. Shipchandler is still racking up major achievements as chief counsel at Charles Schwab where he leads a team of 15 lawyers and 11 other legal professionals.
“Most of the successes of my group cannot be publicly celebrated because they are confidential,” Shipchandler told The Texas Lawbook. “For example, closing nonpublic regulatory investigations or securing millions of dollars in FINRA arbitration victories.”
The Association of Corporate Counsel’s DFW Chapter and The Lawbook have named Shipchandler and his team at Schwab as a finalist for the 2025 DFW Corporate Counsel Award for DFW Corporate Legal Department of the Year. January 7, 2026
Expert Voices
Adapt or Be Replaced — The Future of In‑House Law in the Age of AI - When AI is embedded into daily workflows, processes such as contract review, compliance monitoring, risk analysis and knowledge management stop being bottlenecks and become sources of strategic leverage. That shift frees our teams to spend time where human judgment matters most. This article offers a practical roadmap for GCs: how to adopt AI safely, how to train people effectively and how to redesign processes with AI at the core — so the legal team can be a force multiplier for the business, not a brake. January 7, 2026
My Five Favorite Books: Conrad Hester - Whether it’s the psychological depth of Dostoyevsky or the lyrical observations of Annie Dillard, I’m drawn to stories that linger long after the final page. These books aren’t just entertaining; they are challenging but ultimately reward the time investment with illuminations on what it means to exist in our world. They’re the kind of books that make you think harder, feel deeper, and read slower. January 7, 2026
Stories You Might’ve Missed
The Legacy of Pennzoil v. Texaco 40 Years Later — The Civil Jury Trial of the Century - Pennzoil v. Texaco's legacy remains significant, as it changed how companies handle mergers and acquisitions, caused the Chamber of Commerce to designate Texas as a judicial hellhole in 1986 and directly led to two decades of massive tort reform efforts that dramatically limited the rights of Texans to sue businesses, doctors and insurance companies for wrongdoing. It also launched Texas trial lawyer Joe Jamail to national stardom and made him the richest trial lawyer in American history.
In this in-depth article, The Texas Lawbook provides a detailed timeline of the events involved in the historic litigation, as well as comments from more than a dozen lawyers about the legal strategies employed. November 18, 2025
