Happy New Year. If you’re based in Dallas and looking to shed the holiday plaque that decked the halls of your arteries, you may be interested in an upcoming 5K that benefits a local nonprofit that provides residential substance abuse treatment for women.
Plus, a lawyer in Austin joins the board of Habitat for Humanity, one global firm with heavy Texas presence wins a diversity award presented by their client, AT&T, and a major nonprofit in Texas receives a grant to help level the playing field in consumer debt cases.
— Attorneys Serving the Community will host its 13th Annual ASC Heart & Sole 5K and fun run on Saturday, Feb. 18 at White Rock Lake in Dallas. The 5K and one-mile fun run will benefit Nexus Recovery Center, a nonprofit that provides residential substance abuse treatment to women and adolescent girls in the Dallas area. A unique feature of Nexus is that it allows children to accompany their mothers in treatment. Nexus is ASC’s featured nonprofit for 2022-2023 and the organization has set a donation goal of at least $200,000. ASC is a volunteer network of nearly 400 women lawyers, law students and judges in the Dallas area, and its mission is to bring together women lawyers who collectively utilize their resources and talents to support local nonprofit organizations geared toward benefitting women. The event is family-friendly and dog-friendly.
Registration is $35 until Jan. 8, when prices increase.
Register and more details here: https://heartandsole5k.com/
— Texas Appleseed announced Wednesday that it has received a $10,000 grant from the Texas Bar Foundation to develop a plain language debt collection lawsuit packet that will educate defendants about the court processes and help them participate in their lawsuit. The grant comes as consumer debt claim cases spike across Texas; there was an 87 percent jump in new case filings in justice courts between 2017 and 2021. Texas Appleseed is a nonprofit public justice center known for its work to reform the Texas foster care system, the criminal justice system, financial services and more.
— Winstead Austin shareholder Alex Valdes has joined the board of directors of the Austin Habitat for Humanity. At Winstead, Valdes primarily advises clients in real estate matters, including litigation and arbitration.
— Lawyers at AT&T recently honored Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher with the AT&T Law Firm Diversity Award during the AT&T Legal Conference, a two-and-a-half-day conference that brings all the company’s in-house lawyers together. AT&T chose to honor Gibson Dunn because of the firm’s global “innovative diversity initiatives,” AT&T senior counsel Veronica Davis said, including enhancing its diverse lateral partner hiring and launching the Black Advancement Initiatives, a program dedicated to recruiting, retaining and advancing Black lawyers. Dallas senior of counsel Ron Kirk (and former U.S. trade ambassador and Dallas mayor) accepted the award on behalf of Gibson Dunn.