Less than two years ago, Fort Worth-based PMG hired Jim Phillips to create and build its legal department from scratch. He now supports all agency business units, which signs more than 200 media and real estate contracts a month. At age 34, Phillips regularly finds himself across the proverbial table from lawyers at Google, Apple and Facebook negotiating digital ad contracts in one of the fast-evolving business models in the economy. And he established procedures to ensure compliance with data privacy and FTC regulations – all during “an extraordinarily challenging year.”
CEC’s David Deck Already Had a Full Plate, then Came Covid-19 and Chapter 11
David Deck’s list of job responsibilities as vice president of legal and compliance at CEC Entertainment was pretty extensive pre-Covid-19. He supervised the litigation docket, oversaw labor and employment issues, handled franchising, contracts with suppliers, intellectual property and compliance issues for Chuck E. Cheese and Peter Piper Pizza restaurants. When the pandemic hit, Deck put together a database that tracks the latest federal, state and local regulations and health standards for the jurisdictions of CEC’s 741 restaurants. – a massive project that he undertook without being asked.”[David] lives, bleeds and breathes for this company,” said CEC GC Rudy Rodriguez.
Q&A: David Deck
Texas Lawbook: What are the biggest challenges facing small corporate legal departments today? David Deck: I would have to say it’s the ever changing statutory and regulatory landscape. For a
Q&A: Elizabeth Ramirez-Washka
Lawbook Founder Mark Curriden discusses with Elizabeth Ramirez-Washka, associate GC of the Boy Scouts of America what she sees as her most formative personal experiences, as well as the criteria she looks for in evaluating outside counsel.
Elizabeth Ramirez-Washka: Fostering DEI Values at the Boy Scouts
Elizabeth Ramirez was 11 when her grandmother suffered a serious slip-and-fall injury while working as a custodian. Her grandmother spoke no English. No lawyer would take her case because they didn’t speak Spanish and couldn’t understand what happened. “I knew at that moment that I wanted to be an attorney so I could help others,” Ramirez-Washka said. Four decades later, she is the associate GC with the Boys Scouts of America and making a huge difference.
Dennis Reinhold, Aventiv Help Prisoners During Covid Connect with Their Loved Ones
Many lawyers and corporate general counsel have Covid-19 pandemic experiences, but none have the story that Dennis Reinhold does. As GC of Aventiv Technologies for 15 years, Reinhold led more than 20 M&A deals that transformed the business into the premier prison and jail communications and technology company, which has quintupled in size. But in 2020, he played a critical role in allowing tens of thousands of families across the U.S. have much needed remote contact with their incarcerated relatives. And he helped pioneer a program that reduces recidivism and crime.
Komen GC Eunice Nakamura – ‘Wired to Be a Lawyer’
For the past year, Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation GC Eunice Nakamura has led a team of lawyers from law firms such as DLA Piper in fundamentally restructuring Komen through a series of 61 corporate transactions that brings Komen affiliates around the U.S. under the HQ’s full control.
7-Eleven’s Dawud Crooms Leads $21B Deal ‘Soup to Nuts’
It was a week ago Thursday at 11:30 p.m. Dawud Crooms’ cell phone buzzed. “There’s an issue holding it up,” the caller told the 7-Eleven senior counsel. It was the Dallas-based convenience store chain’s $21 billion acquisition of Speedway. “It’s not an M&A if something doesn’t pop up at the last minute that threatens the whole deal,” Crooms laughs. This is the story of Crooms, a 38-year-old Morehouse alum who worked with dozens of lawyers and bankers for more than a year through a pandemic from the bedroom of his four kids to get one of the biggest M&A deals of the year completed.
Q&A: Dawud Crooms
PREMIUM CONTENT The Texas Lawbook, visited with Dawud Crooms about his mentors, pro bono and public service involvement and how he selects outside counsel.
Forterra GC and Sidley Team Take ‘Holistic Approach’ in Winning $100M Earnout Dispute
Mergers and acquisitions that end up in high-stakes litigation are often about two issues: the fine print of the transaction agreement and the intent of the buyers and sellers. No one knows this more than Forterra GC Lori Browne, who spent the past six years battling the German company that sold the water and drainage pipe maker to private equity fund Lone Star for $1.3 billion on Christmas Eve 2014. Browne won the case and the 2020 DFW Outstanding Corporate Counsel Award for Business Litigation of the Year.