Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury
Dallas-based litigation firm McKool Smith and global legal giant Norton Rose Fulbright have joined an extended list of corporate law firms operating in Texas to pay its associates and counsel five-digit special bonuses. For senior associates, this will push their 2021 compensation above $500,000. The Texas Lawbook has the details.
Advocates and opponents of the plan to create a separate civil court system for business versus business disputes made their arguments to the Texas House Judiciary and Civil Jurisprudence Committee Tuesday. No vote was taken and very few questions were asked.
Brittany Scheier was weeks away from graduating from UT Law and starting a career in Big Law three years ago when she suffered two severe strokes, causing brutal pain, a 30% loss of vision and paralysis on her right side. Quit? Scheier worked on last month's Noble Corp.'s acquisition of Pacific Drilling and five other M&A deals valued $1 billion or more. The story of what happened between March 4, 2018 and today is extraordinary. The American Heart Association thinks so, too.
Vinson & Elkins announced Wednesday that it is giving its associates and counsel “special bonuses” ranging from $12,000 for the firm’s newest associates to $64,000 for its most senior associates and counsel. Akin Gump announced similar bonuses Tuesday.
The new rankings are out. No, not college hoops. The much-maligned U.S. News and World Report lists only one Texas law school in the top 50, but four rank between No. 52 and No. 60. The biggest disappointment regards the UNT Dallas College of Law. The Texas Lawbook gives the ranking the serious examination that it deserves.
Three hundred ninety-two days ago, four women partners opened the Dallas office of St. Louis-based Thompson Coburn. The date was March 2. The lawyers had big kickoff plans, including a big office opening party. Two weeks later, a once-a-century pandemic hit. Courthouses were shutdown. Restaurants shuttered. Air travel nearly ceased. No lunches or dinners or parties. Nicole Williams and her team shifted their strategy. What did they do and how did they do it? A Texas Lawbook Q&A has the details.
Zoom court hearings in Texas are here to stay. A backlog of thousands of jury trials caused by Covid-19 must be addressed. Access to justice for the poor must be improved. Racial prejudice – and the perception of bias – is a “disease” in the Texas justice system. Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Nathan Hecht delivered his State of Judiciary address to a joint session of the Texas legislature Tuesday by live video.
Evan Young and Jason Villalba helped draft pending legislation to create complex business litigation courts in Texas. Last week, The Texas Lawbook interviewed them.
Jason Villalba: When you are dealing with billions of dollars and thousands of jobs are on the line, you don’t want to be rolling the dice. There needs to be a judicial ecosystem in place that better handles these types of cases. Having predictable outcomes is crucial in these large business disputes. Texas needs something like Delaware Chancery Courts to put us on the same global scale.Corporate executives and a handful of their lawyers want to create a new specialized court system that focuses only on complex commercial disputes similar to the chancery courts in Delaware - but with a Texas twist. The proposed Texas business court would have appointed judges, juries and its own business appellate court. It also has opponents who argued that there is nothing wrong with the current civil court system and judges elected by citizens. The Texas Lawbook has both sides arguments and in-depth details of the business court proposal.
A hotly divided Texas Supreme Court decided Friday that the Texas Constitution prevents them from deciding – at least not at this time – whether ERCOT is a governmental body that has sovereign immunity and is thus protected from lawsuits. But four justices, including Chief Justice Nathan Hecht, disagree: “The answer to the immunity issue in this case has become perhaps more important to the public than even to the parties. The parties want to know. The public wants to know. The court refuses to answer.”
© Copyright 2026 The Texas Lawbook
The content on this website is protected under federal Copyright laws. Any use without the consent of The Texas Lawbook is prohibited.
