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CDT Roundup: Big Start, Quiet Finish For Deal Week Going into Holiday - The week ending Aug. 30 saw 10 deals with a reported value of $6.6 billion. That's a significant drop from the prior week's 23 deals for $15.2 billion. We could write that off as a holiday week problem, but last year at this time, we saw 13 deals for $20.6 billion. The week began strong enough with the announcement of a $3.1 billion acquisition in the Permian and AT&T's $23 billion licensing agreement with EchoStar, but M&A simply dwindled over the rest of the week. That and more in this week's CDT Roundup. August 31, 2025Allen Pusey
Dynamic Energy Deal Duo: Catching up with Skadden’s Emery Choi and Mingda Zhao - Skadden’s Houston M&A group recently welcomed veteran oil and gas partners Emery Choi and Mingda Zhao, reuniting them with prominent Texas dealmaker Steve Gill. Together, Choi and Zhao bring years of experience steering energy sector clients through high-stakes M&A, joint ventures and cross-border investments. Their record includes leading transaction such as billion-dollar-plus deals for Continental Resources, Marathon Oil and Occidental Petroleum. The duo recently shared with The Texas Lawbook their insights on today’s energy M&A landscape, shifting capital trends and the evolving deal dynamics shaping the current market. August 30, 2025Jeff Schnick
Ret. Judge Barbara Lynn Joins Lynn Pinker - Saying she “never thought about going anywhere else,” recently retired U.S. District Judge Barbara Lynn confirmed Friday that she is joining the law firm founded three decades ago by her husband, Mike Lynn. She will join Lynn Pinker Hurst & Schwegmann as a partner. Judge Lynn's practice will focus on mediation, trial consultancy on complex business cases and internal corporate investigations. Her hourly rate will be $2,500. August 29, 2025Mark Curriden & Alexa Shrake
Newly Retired U.S. Judge Lynn Will Mediate Huge Boy Scouts Insurance Dispute - Barbara M.G. Lynn, the recently retired judge for the Northern District of Texas, has been appointed as mediator in an insurance dispute involving the Boy Scouts of America that the presiding judge in the matter called “the mother of all coverage cases.” August 29, 2025Bruce Tomaso
U.S. Judge Jane Boyle Takes Senior Status - U.S. District Judge Jane Boyle of the Northern District of Texas announced Thursday that she is taking senior status effective Oct. 1. Judge Boyle, a former state and federal prosecutor who has served on the federal bench for more than 21 years, is the second federal judge in Dallas to take senior status this month. August 28, 2025Mark Curriden & Bruce Tomaso
Harvest Midstream Strikes $1B Deal for MPLX Gas Assets in Rockies - Harvest Midstream is making a $1 billion bet on the Rockies, agreeing to acquire natural gas gathering and processing assets from Ohio-based MPLX. The deal expands Houston-based Harvest’s footprint in Wyoming, Utah and Colorado with 1,500 miles of pipelines and 845 million cubic feet per day of processing capacity, underscoring the private midstream company’s push for scale in natural gas. A Texas team from Kirkland & Ellis advised Harvest on the transaction. August 28, 2025Jeff Schnick
Freeman Seeks Dismissal of GWG Bondholders’ RICO Suit - Elizabeth Freeman and her law firm filed the 54-page dismissal motion, which includes more than 1,000 pages of exhibits, on Tuesday. The bondholders had filed suit in June, alleging she was among a group of individuals working “together to prey upon distressed entities for their own financial gain.”  August 26, 2025Michelle Casady

Centerpiece

Asked & Answered with Gibson Dunn’s Trey Cox: Pizza, Pipelines and a Hot Streak - Asked & Answered is a new standing feature The Texas Lawbook will bring readers every other week, highlighting the work of leading Texas lawyers and offering insight into their lives outside the courtroom. In this edition, we sit down with Trey Cox, co-chair of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher’s global litigation practice group and co-partner in charge of its Dallas office.

Cox has won some big verdicts recently and, with another trial on his calendar in October, he plans to keep the momentum going. August 27, 2025Alexa Shrake

Expert Voices

A Statistical Review of the 2024–2025 SCOTX Term - The Texas Supreme Court heard arguments in 63 cases and issued decisions in 62 of those cases during the past term. Those cases ranged from the typical cases the state's highest court hears each year — petitions for review arising from the state courts of appeals, a handful of certified questions from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and a few mandamus petitions — to a few cases in less common procedural postures, like an appeal from the Board of Disciplinary Appeals and a direct appeal from a trial court. One of the first questions clients often ask when seeking to reverse or defend a decision at the Texas Supreme Court is, “What are my odds?” August 28, 2025Allyson N. Ho, Elizabeth A. Kiernan & Catherine Frappier
Texas Mini-TCPA Expands to Include Text Messages - The updated law represents a major expansion of the Texas Telephone Solicitation Act's scope beyond traditional telephone calls, reflecting the evolving landscape of digital marketing communications. Certain businesses that send marketing text messages without registering face liability under the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act as well as substantial penalties of $5,000 per individual text message that individual plaintiffs may recover. A federal court in the Eastern District of Texas last month awarded $170,000 to a single pro se plaintiff under the existing version of the statute for 34 phone calls. August 25, 2025James C. Bookhout & J. David Washburn

More Stories

AT&T to Acquire EchoStar Wireless Licenses for $23B
Litigation Roundup: Dallas Firm Readies for Airline Fatality Trial 
Elon Musk Hires Carrington Coleman and NY Firm to Battle Apple, OpenAI
Crescent Energy to Acquire Permian Rival Vital Energy for $3.1B
More Stories

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Corp. Deal Tracker/M&A

GCs/Corp. Legal Depts.

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Stories You Might’ve Missed

  • Courtroom Curveball: $440M Longtime Dispute Over Sale of Astros Ends in Settlement - After nearly 12 years of litigating, it took exactly one day of trial testimony for Jim Crane and Drayton McLane to settle their $440 million fight over the sale of the Houston Astros and a stake in a regional sports network. The Texas Lawbook’s Michelle Casady has the details from the courtroom and more. July 25, 2025Michelle Casady

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