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Mark Curriden

Mark Curriden is a lawyer/journalist and founder of The Texas Lawbook. In addition, he is a contributing legal correspondent for The Dallas Morning News.

Mark Curriden

Mark Curriden is a lawyer/journalist and founder of The Texas Lawbook. In addition, he is a contributing legal correspondent for The Dallas Morning News.

Mark is the author of the best selling book Contempt of Court: A Turn-of-the-Century Lynching That Launched a Hundred Years of Federalism. The book received the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Award and numerous other honors. He also is a frequent lecturer at bar associations, law firm retreats, judicial conferences and other events. His CLE presentations have been approved for ethics credit in nearly every state.

From 1988 to 1994, Mark was the legal affairs writer for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where he covered the Georgia Supreme Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. He authored a three-part series of articles that exposed rampant use of drug dealers and criminals turned paid informants by local and federal law enforcement authorities, which led to Congressional oversight hearings. A related series of articles by Mark contributed to a wrongly convicted death row inmate being freed.

The Dallas Morning News made Mark its national legal affairs writer in 1996. For more than six years, Mark wrote extensively about the tobacco litigation, alleged price-fixing in the pharmaceutical industry, the Exxon Valdez litigation, and more than 25 cases before the Supreme Court of the United States. Mark also authored a highly-acclaimed 16-part series on the future of the American jury system. As part of his extensive coverage of the tobacco litigation, Mark unearthed confidential documents and evidence showing that the then Texas Attorney General, Dan Morales, had made a secret deal with a long-time lawyer and friend in which the friend would have profited hundreds of millions of dollars from the tobacco settlement. As a direct result of Mark’s articles, the U.S. Department of Justice opened a criminal investigation, which led to the indictment and conviction of Mr. Morales.

For the past 25 years, Mark has been a senior contributing writer for the ABA Journal, which is the nation’s largest legal publication. His articles have been on the cover of the magazine more than a dozen times. He has received scores of honors for his legal writing, including the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Award, the American Judicature Society’s Toni House Award, the American Trial Lawyer’s Amicus Award, and the Chicago Press Club’s Headliner Award. Twice, in 2001 and 2005, the American Board of Trial Advocates named Mark its “Journalist of the Year.”

From 2002 to 2010, Mark was the senior communications counsel at Vinson & Elkins, a 750-lawyer global law firm.

Mark’s book, Contempt of Court, tells the story of Ed Johnson, a young black man from Chattanooga, Tenn., in 1906. Johnson was falsely accused of rape, railroaded through the criminal justice system, found guilty and sentenced to death – all in three weeks. Two African-American lawyers stepped forward to represent Johnson on appeal. In doing so, they filed one of the first federal habeas petitions ever attempted in a state criminal case. The lawyers convinced the Supreme Court of the United States to stay Johnson’s execution. But before they could have him released, a lynch mob, aided by the sheriff and his deputies, lynched Johnson. Angered, the Supreme Court ordered the arrest of the sheriff and leaders of the mob, charging them with contempt of the Supreme Court. It is the only time in U.S. history that the Supreme Court conducted a criminal trial.

You can reach Mark at mark.curriden@texaslawbook.net or 214.232.6783.

Dropbox Senior Counsel Victoria Nwankwo ‘Solves Problems Before They Become Serious’

Victoria Nwankwo was a freshman at Oklahoma City University when her father died unexpectedly. She calls it a defining moment.

"That experience forged my resilience and shifted my perspective on what constitutes a 'crisis.' I tend to remain calm under professional pressure because I've navigated significant personal adversity,” she said. Two decades later, those hard-learned life experiences have made Nwankwo one of the most creative and successful corporate employment lawyers in North Texas. As senior managing counsel at the cloud storage company Dropbox, Nwankwo last year she guided the company with a $7 billion market cap through a painful global restructuring and downsizing of 20 percent of its global workforce while also leading the business through rapidly evolving political and regulatory landscapes.

Now, she is a finalist for the 2025 DFW Corporate Counsel Awards.

Mark Curriden

Senior Counsel Jane Ann Neiswender Helps Michaels Defend IP and Navigate Tariffs

For the past three years, Jane Ann Neiswender has been the deputy general counsel at Irving-based Michaels Stores, where she has helped guide the national specialty craft store chain through a digital transformation, helped purchase intellectual property of failed retail competitors and guided the business through significant supply chain issues related to recent tariffs placed on other countries.

“It is no secret that the retail industry has faced unchartered waters over the past 18 months, including consumer concern over the economy, an increasingly complex regulatory environment and new challenges stemming from tariffs,” she told The Texas Lawbook. “As a department, we work closely with the business to navigate these issues in a way that is compliant and provides our customers with the goods and value that they expect.”

Citing her extraordinary work and achievements during the past 18 months, the Association of Corporate Counsel’s DFW Chapter and The Lawbook have named Neiswender as a finalist for the 2025 DFW Corporate Counsel Award for Senior Counsel of the Year for a Midsized Legal Department (six to 20 attorneys).

Mark Curriden

Saks Files Bankruptcy in Houston

Luxury retailer Saks Global Holdings, the parent company of Neiman Marcus, Bergdorf Goodman and Saks Fifth Avenue, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Tuesday in the Southern District of Texas. The retailer selected Willkie Farr, Haynes Boone and Bradley Arant as its lead legal advisors to guide the bankruptcy.

Mark Curriden

Children’s Health Assoc. GC Kathleen Benner’s ‘Impact will be Felt for Years to Come’

Kathleen Benner’s first job out of college, armed with a marketing degree, was traveling between manufacturing facilities to sell corrugated boxes.

“After about a year, I decided that if I wanted a more respectable and sustainable environment, I’d need a career change,” she told The Texas Lawbook.

Benner went to a bookstore and bought a book about whether to seek an MBA or a JD. “I didn’t even know what a JD was, but I read the book in one day and decided to go to law school,” she said. “That decision was validated almost immediately.”

Now the associate general counsel at Children’s Health System of Texas, Benner has been named as one of two finalists for the 2025 DFW Corporate Counsel Award for Senior Counsel of the Year for a Midsized Legal Department (six to 20 attorneys) by The Association of Corporate Counsel’s DFW Chapter and The Lawbook.

Mark Curriden

Brinker’s Cam Turner: Father’s Wrongful Imprisonment Inspires Legal Excellence

Cameasha Turner was in the third grade when her mother told her the story of her father's wrongful conviction and life-prison sentence. “It was truly a life-altering moment for me. My dad was 18 when he was wrongfully convicted," Turner told The Texas Lawbook. "Hearing that as a child was heavy. I didn’t know how to process the shame or the hurt, but I did know one thing: It wasn’t right. Wanting justice for my dad is what sparked it, but understanding the power of education is what carried me the rest of the way."

More than two decades later, Cam Turner is corporate counsel at Dallas-based Brinker where she is making major decisions and achieving significant successes on the operations of the multibillion-dollar hospitality company whose restaurant brands include Chili’s and Maggiano’s Little Italy. The Association of Corporate Counsel’s DFW Chapter and The Lawbook have named Turner as a finalist for the 2025 DFW Corporate Counsel Award for Rookie of the Year, which is awarded to counsel who have been in-house for three years or less.

Mark Curriden

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.

Mark Curriden

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