by Mark Curriden
(Aug. 27) – The Association of Corporate Counsel’s Dallas-Fort Worth Chapter and The Texas Lawbook officially announced Monday that the nominating period for the 2018 Outstanding Corporate Counsel Awards will start Oct. 1 and that this year’s awards ceremony will be Jan. 24 at the President George W. Bush Institute.
The ACC-DFW and The Lawbook are making some significant changes to this year’s awards, including the addition of two new categories.
The Texas Lawbook and ACC-DFW plan to release full details about the individual awards and the nominations criteria in the final week of September.
This will be the second year that ACC-DFW and The Texas Lawbook are partnering for the awards. More than 330 corporate general counsel and business lawyers attended the 2017 Outstanding Corporate Counsel Awards. Twenty-nine corporate in-house lawyers and legal departments were honored.
“The program and the awards were excellent,” says T-Mobile Vice President of Legal Chris Luna. “Many in-house lawyers are unsung heroes and the awards ceremony did a wonderful job of shining light on their tremendous work.”
A key goal when ACC-DFW and The Texas Lawbook decided to team up was to make the awards significantly more substantive by focusing on the actual legal and business work of the lawyers and to make the awards more credible by upgrading the judging process.
“Last year we made the conscious decision to switch-up a few things and really put the focus on the candidates and their amazing stories,” says ACC-DFW President David Kilpatrick. “Our partnership with The Texas Lawbook and their partner, the Dallas Business Journal, accomplished this goal by providing in-depth articles about each of the candidates detailing why they were being honored. These articles can still be viewed today on their websites.
“At the same time, we made a few tweaks to the judging process and the actual awards ceremony,” says Kilpatrick, who is general counsel of EnvironX Solutions. “All these things combined to make a phenomenally successful evening program, which we plan to build on for the coming year.”
The Texas Lawbook and ACC-DFW leaders also are pleased to announce that two new award categories have been created.
One new award will focus on innovative and creative ways that corporate legal departments and their outside counsel are partnering together on projects.
The second award recognizes individual in-house counsel who are 35 years or younger and who have already achieved extraordinary success in their positions.
ACC-DFW and The Texas Lawbook will announce the official categories and their criteria the last week of September, as well as provide a link to submit nominations. An independent panel of judges will review the nominations and determine the finalists.
The Texas Lawbook will interview the finalists and the lawyers who nominated them and publish lengthy articles about each finalist. The articles highlight the tremendous legal work being performed by corporate in-house counsel and their outside law firms.
“The Texas Lawbook articles were incredible because they told the story of each finalist and detailed the reasons why they were nominated and selected,” Luna says. “The in-depth articles made the awards much more substantive because we really got to know the finalists and the great work they have done.”
Texas Lawbook Publisher Brooks Igo says nearly all of the sponsors of this past year’s Outstanding Corporate Counsel Awards have signed up again. The returning sponsors include Newhouse + Noblin, Akin Gump, Greenberg Traurig, Haynes and Boone, Ankura, Bailey Brauer, Baker Botts, Locke Lord, Androvett Legal Media & Marketing and Sewell Automotive.
Igo says there are a limited number of sponsorship opportunities still available to help celebrate and promote the best legal work by corporate in-house lawyers in Texas. Please email Igo at brooks.igo@texaslawbook.net for more information.