Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury
The Trump administration is trying to persuade a federal appeals court to restore President Donald Trump’s executive orders against Houston-based Susman Godfrey and three other law firms, arguing that a president’s power to declare the firms national security threats is "unreviewable" by the courts.
Yvette Ostolaza grew up in an immigrant neighborhood in Miami, the daughter of parents who fled Cuba in the 1960s. She learned English from watching Sesame Street. As a young teenager, she lied about her age to get a job at Sears to make extra money for her family. When she announced that she wanted to be the first in the family to go to college, they told her she was crazy.
Four decades later, Ostolaza became the first Latina and first Dallas lawyer to lead a global corporate law firm — a position she has held since 2022 at Sidley Austin, a 2,300-lawyer firm with 21 offices and more than $3.7 billion in annual revenue.
The Texas Lawbook announced Thursday that it is awarding the first-ever Texas Lawbook Law Firm Leadership Award to Ostolaza.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has named Dallas lawyer David Woodcock as its new director of enforcement, overseeing the agency’s federal civil corporate securities and fraud investigations and prosecutions.
Woodcock is taking a multimillion-dollar pay cut by leaving Gibson Dunn, where he has been a partner in Dallas since 2023.
The Association of Corporate Counsel’s Houston Chapter and The Texas Lawbook announced more recipients of 2026 Houston Corporate Counsel Awards. General counsel and senior in-house counsel from six of the world’s largest corporate energy and chemical giants, a handful of thriving midsized energy industry operators and the top lawyer for Houston Rockets owner and entertainment billionaire Tilman Fertitta have been named.
During the next week, ACC Houston and The Lawbook will unveil the 2026 award winners in 17 different categories.
More than a dozen legal groups representing corporate general counsel, smaller law firms, former judges and law professors filed amicus briefs Friday with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit supporting Susman Godfrey and three other corporate law firms that are the targets of punishing executive orders by President Donald Trump.
The briefs signed by 21 law professors at Texas law schools, 23 small-firm lawyers in Texas and several prominent Texas firms asked the appellate court judges to uphold four lower court rulings that declared the presidential executive orders unconstitutional.
Fifty-nine law students from eight different Texas law schools are among the 1,224 law students who filed an amicus brief supporting Susman Godfrey and three other law firms fighting executive orders issued last spring by President Donald Trump declaring the law firms to be threats to national security.
President Donald Trump’s executive order targeting Susman Godfrey “violates the First Amendment many times over,” is “odious viewpoint discrimination” and should be declared unconstitutional and illegally unenforceable.
With that opening argument, lawyers for Susman Godfrey filed a new brief Friday asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to uphold a lower court ruling permanently restraining President Trump’s executive order issued last spring targeting the Houston litigation powerhouse from being enforced. Two other corporate law firms that were the targets of President Trump’s EOs — WilmerHale and Jenner & Block — also filed briefs in their respective cases, which have been consolidated before the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C.
Without writing a single sentence to explain why, the Texas Supreme Court on Friday officially ended any efforts by tens of thousands of Texas citizens and small businesses to sue power generators for personal injuries, wrongful deaths and property damages suffered during Winter Storm Uri in February 2021.
The decision is a huge victory for large power generators such as Luminant, NRG, Calpine, Exelon and Sempra Energy, who argued that the lawsuits, which sought billions of dollars in damages, should be dismissed because the unprecedented weather, not the companies’ actions, was responsible for the injuries and damages.
The Texas legal community has a history of great leaders.
To identify, celebrate and teach leadership skills, challenges and successes, The Texas Lawbook, with the support of the Association of Corporate Counsel’s DFW Chapter, has created the Texas Lawbook Leadership Symposium.
The launch event on April 13 will feature two panels of extraordinary leaders.
Judge E. Grady Jolly, who served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit for 43 years, died Monday. He was 88.
Former Fifth Circuit Judge Gregg Costa wrote in a LinkedIn post that Judge Jolly had a "razor-sharp wit, was a world-class raconteur, and brought uncommon wisdom and judgment to deciding cases.
“Judge Jolly cared about the law and his views as much as anyone on the court. But after arguing his position with aplomb, he would walk out of the conference with his arm draped around the colleague with whom he had just disagreed, telling jokes on his way to toasting the colleague with a cocktail. We need more of that good spiritedness these days."
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