Brad Nitschke’s passion for public service started in his teens at Jesuit College Preparatory School of Dallas.
“Justice and service have always been important to me, and my time at Jesuit left me deeply convinced that there are real problems hurting real people in the world, and we are called to use our gifts and talents to intervene where we can,” Nitschke said.
Nitschke connected those “values to a career in law” during the summer of his sophomore year at Texas A&M University.
“I filled in for a victims advocate in the family violence division of the Dallas DA’s office while she was on maternity leave, interviewing and advocating for people seeking a protective order against a violent family member or intimate partner,” he said. “That experience really opened my eyes to the tangible ways lawyers can effect change in individual lives and society at large, and I haven’t looked back since.”
Five years ago, Nitschke officially married his values and passion with his career mission when he joined the legal team at Parkland Health.
During the past two years, Nitschke and his team achieved some extraordinary successes, including:
- Led transformative real estate transactions;
- Developed workplace violence prevention initiatives and implemented procedures addressing dangerous patient behaviors; and
- Worked with the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals of Dallas to build a program to help care for the pets of low-income patients during hospitalizations.
Last month, Parkland named Nitschke its interim executive vice president for legal affairs.
In an interview with The Texas Lawbook, he said his most important achievements are those that directly connect his position with patient care.
“Any time we can partner with our clinical colleagues to remove a barrier to care is a huge win, whether it’s in an individual patient’s complex situation or part of a process-improvement project,” he said. “Sometimes this looks like supporting a team who’s trying to ensure the safety of a discharge plan for a patient with really complex needs, and sometimes it looks like helping a team navigate the maze of laws that impact end-of-life decision-making for a patient who is gravely ill.”
“I’ve been fortunate to help guide our work on initiatives that have systemwide impact,” Nitschke said.
The Association of Corporate Counsel’s DFW Chapter and The Lawbook are honoring Nitschke with the 2025 DFW Corporate Counsel Award for General Counsel of the Year for a Nonprofit or Governmental Agency.
The awards ceremony is Jan. 29 at the George W. Bush Institute.
“The biggest challenge I have seen Brad tackle is quite simply the ongoing details of operation, investigation, sensible solutions that address the needs of the many who participate in the success and operation of Parkland,” said prominent construction law expert Marc Gravely, who nominated Nitschke for the award. “Parkland is not just a hospital. It is the heartbeat of the community. People have committed their time, toil and emotion to the Parkland mission. I am taken by the enormity of it all.”
“Brad may be the busiest person I have known,” Gravely said. “His day is filled with scheduled meetings. His efficiency is remarkable. He is the only in-house counsel I get emails from at 6 a.m.”
Premium Subscriber Q&A: Brad Nitschke discusses the traits he seeks in outside counsel, what outside counsel need to know when working with him and more.
Dr. Fred Cerise, the CEO of Parkland, said Nitschke has earned the trust and respect of the hospital’s executives in a short period.
“Early in my medical school training, I read a quote that said how important is to have compassion, but that you also have to know what to do,” Dr. Cerise told The Lawbook. “Brad has the combination of compassion for our patients, families and staff, and he is also really smart. He knows his business, has good judgment, and you can trust him.”
“He represents Parkland extremely well with our external constituents, including the state legislature,” he said. “While Brad is very busy, he will show up at any hour when others need help. You may not realize how common it is in our system to run into complex legal questions at all hours, and Brad will engage personally when needed to provide critical guidance to our clinical and administrative teams.”
Nitschke is a good leader, according to Husch Blackwell partner Alison Hollender, because he understands the “operational needs, concerns and constraints of his clients.”
“Often, attorneys give advice in a vacuum regarding what the law is, but Brad is able to advise on not only what the law is, but is able to predict how his client will interpret that advice so he can give them opinions about their best options,” Hollender said.
“Brad is really great about not just thinking about the medical treatment Parkland provides, but how it can positively impact the patients and their ability to access care,” she said. “Brad partners with leadership on initiatives to ensure that patients not only receive the best care possible, but that they seek preventive care, they have access to follow up care, and they have access to social resources.”
Nitschke grew up in Oak Cliff and West Dallas. His parents met in architecture school at Texas A&M and worked in graphics for most of his childhood. They now live on a ranch near Dallas, raising grass-fed cattle.
After graduating from Texas A&M with a degree in psychology, Nitschke earned his law degree from the University of Texas in 2007.
Nitschke was the first lawyer in his family, although he married former litigator Buddy Apple, who is now a managing director at Wegman Partners, a legal recruiting firm.
“My almost six-year-old has declared she wants to be ‘a judge, like Sonia Sotomayor’ when she grows up, so I’ve got my fingers crossed,” he said.
Nitschke spent 14 years as a litigator at Jackson Walker.
“I’ll be forever grateful for the extraordinary training I received ‘growing up’ as a lawyer there,” he said. “It was very hard to leave a book of excellent clients and a group of colleagues anybody would be lucky to have.”
As Covid-19 pandemic lifted, Nitschke faced big decisions.
“I realized I had a chance to indulge a longstanding desire to be more closely connected to my healthcare clients’ day-to-day operations and to avoid returning to a travel-intensive firm practice after spending my baby daughter’s first year working from home with her nearby,” he said. “That, and the job description for the Parkland operations lawyer job, was one of those ‘I can’t believe some lawyer actually gets to do this job for a living’ moments for me, and that gave me the nudge I needed to move forward.”
Nitschke said the last few years have “been a time of disruptive change in healthcare at large, and in public health and safety-net healthcare in particular.”
“As lawyers trying to navigate that landscape, we’re dancing on a moving floor most days,” he said. “It’s reminiscent of the early days of Covid in some ways, where the first task on our to-do list each day is often determining what’s changed in the last 24 hours.”
Nitschke said he is “constantly challenged to consider the impact” of his decisions on the hospital and individual patients.
“When I was a law firm partner, I often tried to ease the fears of junior lawyers who’d just confessed some minor hiccup in a case by reminding them that ‘this is not a life-or death issue, and we can fix it.’ That’s often not the case in my practice at Parkland,” he said. “I’ve challenged our department to center on the theme that if we do our jobs well, more people will have access to healthcare who otherwise wouldn’t. And the reverse is just as true.”
“Legally, the healthcare system is endlessly complex and constantly changing — in fundamental ways at times — these days,” he said.
Nitschke led Parkland’s efforts to address “challenging patient behaviors and ensuring the safety of our workforce.” He and his team conducted a series of two-dozen focus groups with frontline staff across the system to gather input on needs and concerns.
“The resulting suite of policies and processes have been effective in giving our staff a roadmap to address challenging or dangerous patient behaviors while keeping our role as a safety-net hospital top of mind,” he said.
More recently, Nitschke’s team heard concerns from hospital staff about involved “unhoused patients in the emergency department.”
“They didn’t have a great resource to care for the pets of patients who needed hospital admission and had no friends or family to care for the animals,” he said. “As a result, some patients would rather forego a needed hospital stay than risk losing their pets. We structured an arrangement with our incredible community partners at the SPCA to provide care for these pets while their owners are in the hospital, helping to ensure that we’re caring for these important relationships while meeting patients’ medical needs as well.”
Gravely, who represents Parkland in a major design and construction defect lawsuit, said Nitschke’s “command of the details is impressive.”
“Brad’s ability to process a thousand details and lead our team has been nothing short of spectacular,” Gravely said. “I have been particularly impressed by his dedication to the Parkland mission and sensitivities to all stakeholders and their personal roles and responsibilities. I have only met Brad and known him in the context of this massive litigation. If my experience with him is any indication of how he operates within Parkland, his success is his ability to cut through the noise to find the signal. He discerns what really drives someone and honors that in conjunction with the mission.”
“Brad is a leader, plain and simple,” he said. “He could easily be the CEO of a giant company.”
Nitschke has achieved success on the transactional side of the legal practice. A complex real estate deal, which is still ongoing, ties together multiple related deals, aligning valuation, timing issues and managing significant uncertainty as circumstances evolve.
“The transaction changed meaningfully over time, requiring creativity, flexibility and careful risk management,” said Dallas lawyer Sean Tate of the Tate Law Group. “Brad quickly identified the core issues and focused on structuring solutions that protected Parkland while still allowing the transaction to move forward. He was deeply involved in the mechanics of the deal, thoughtful about contingencies and intentional about sequencing events so Parkland was never overexposed.”
“When the deal shifted, Brad adapted seamlessly,” Tate said. “He worked collaboratively with counterparties and advisors to reframe the structure in a way that addressed new realities while preserving Parkland’s objectives. The result was a revised framework that worked for everyone involved. It was a strong example of Brad’s ability to combine technical legal skill, strategic foresight and practical problem-solving.”
Dr. Cerise said Nitschke has provided leadership on Parkland’s most significant and thorny issues.
“One of the more creative projects he led involved Parkland partnering with the local mental health authority to support financing of their new campus,” he said. “This is a project important to Parkland and the community that really had no precedent and so he had to figure out how to achieve the end result and protect Parkland and the taxpayers along the way. He will not shy away from an unconventional request, and he will look for the potential pitfalls to get to a solution that works and protects the interests of our organization.”
Nitschke said that his best days are those that allow him “to split time between working in the office with my exceptional team and spending time in the hospital or one of our clinics with our patient-facing clients.”
“Those days are unbeatable,” he said. “It’s not unusual for my day at Parkland to include updating our board on a yet another change in the law, responding to an urgent page from a physician who needs advice on what sort of treatment the law allows in a particular case, weighing in on litigation strategy in a significant commercial dispute, coaching a colleague through a client-service issue, and helping a department plan the development and launch of a new patient-facing service.”
“No two days are the same, and none are boring,” Nitschke said. “It’s the most fun I’ve had practicing law, and it’s deeply meaningful to know that everything we do is aimed at ensuring healthcare for neighbors who are depending on us.”
Fun Facts: Brad Nitschke
- Favorite book: Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston is a book that has drawn me back in every few years since college. Hurston’s ability to represent her characters’ lives and voices with empathy, respect and clarity is just unmatched.
- Favorite music group: I’ve been running to Ruthie Foster for 20 years and don’t plan to stop anytime soon.
- Favorite movie: For white noise while I’m meal prepping for the week: any of the Bourne movies. If I’m seriously focused: Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Viola Davis in Doubt.
- Favorite restaurant: Dinner with kids: veggie enchiladas and potato skins at Nova. Dinner without kids: foie stuffed prunes and the catch of the day at Lucia.
- Favorite beverage: Dry gin martini with a twist.
- Favorite vacation: Any vacation that involves exploring an old European city on foot, especially if that city is Paris or Lyon.
- Hero in life: I look up to people who set their own comfort or interests aside to serve someone else. I’m fortunate to have known many of these heroes in my life.