Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury
Sophie Rohnke will officially join Southern Methodist University on August 1 as vice president for legal affairs and government relations, general counsel, and secretary to the Board of Trustees. She succeeds Paul Ward, who announced his retirement earlier this year.
The Texas Lawbook asked 18 corporate in-house counsel at businesses ranging from LyondellBasell, Energy Transfer and ExxonMobil to PepsiCo, Houston Methodist and Fertitta Entertainment for their experiences so far with AI.
Customers at Dave & Buster’s and Main Event in Dallas-Fort Worth were introduced to a new employee at the entertainment and restaurant operations company: New D&B CLO Rachel Morgan, who spent her first week on the job working among its rank-and-file employees of all levels.
“Everything I ate was delicious, but my favorite was the pepperoni pizza with a cauliflower crust and the key lime pie cheesecake,” Morgan told The Texas Lawbook. “As for games, the new Stranger Things and John Wick games were a blast. At Main Event, they convinced me to try to ropes course and the human crane — I looked ridiculous, but both were a blast. And the staff beat me badly in laser tag. I had hoped they would have mercy on me, but they did not.”
Rachel Morgan is succeeding Rudy Rodriguez as the chief legal officer at the Coppell-based public company. Rodriguez is teaming up with former Dell legal executive Janet Bawcom starting July 1 to provide fractional GC services. (Photo credit: Patrick Kleineberg/Texas Lawbook)
The May 28 awards ceremony took on an extra energy because two of the award recipients — Fertitta Entertainment General Counsel Steven Scheinthal and ExxonMobil Senior Counsel David Kern — were in the news that very day for two huge successes for their clients.
“What an extraordinary event this is every year,” said Travis Torrence, who is U.S. head of legal for global energy giant Shell. “The Texas Lawbook and ACC Houston make this one of the must-attend events for the legal industry in Texas."
Chevron announced Friday that Austin appellate lawyer and former Texas solicitor general Scott A. Keller will be the Houston energy giant’s new general counsel starting July 1 and will take over as chief legal officer when current chief legal officer, R. Hewitt Pate, retires next year.
Pate has been the chief legal officer at Chevron for 17 years.
Scott Kelly accomplished more in his first year at ConocoPhillips than many in-house counsel accomplish in decades of service. Kelly joined the ConocoPhillips legal department in December 2024 but has already won three major trials, defeating $250 million in claims against ConocoPhillips and recovering $12 million in damages. And he settled a fourth case that involved multiple fatalities.
Citing these huge courtroom victories, the Association of Corporate Counsel’s Houston Chapter and The Texas Lawbook are awarding the 2026 Houston Corporate Counsel Award for Senior Counsel of the Year Award for a Large Legal Department to Kelly.
In this Q&A with The Texas Lawbook, Scott Kelly discusses the traits he seeks in outside counsel, what outside counsel need to know when working with him and more.
When a federal jury in Houston hit KBR with a $71 million verdict in a trade secrets case involving processes used to manufacture polycarbonate, the engineering and construction firm’s senior counsel Kriste Sullivan didn’t flinch.
She knew the plaintiffs had taken a big gamble. And she knew she had an ace in the hole. But it wasn’t just the luck of the draw that resulted in KBR eventually completely pouring out Trinseo’s $360 million trade secrets case.
Citing that win, the Association of Corporate Counsel’s Houston Chapter and The Texas Lawbook have honored Sullivan, KBR and the lawyers at Susman Godfrey and Bracewell the 2026 Houston Corporate Counsel Award for Business Litigation of the Year.
Energy company legal departments have a lot on their agendas in 2026, including ever-changing tariffs, turmoil in the Middle East, constant reversals in federal regulatory schemes, threats of cybersecurity and intellectual property theft and constantly rising hourly rates from outside counsel. As companies struggle to manage or keep up, Phillips 66 GC Vanessa Sutherland and Legal Ops Director Michael Voutsinas have taken a different approach: It has dramatically upgraded its entire legal operations team that deals with effective financial management of legal work, employee performance management, technology adoption and usage, outside vendor management, information governance, e-discovery and data analytics to optimize legal services delivery. The reforms have resulted in several internal and external successes.
"It has become more critical for staff functions to be both a good corporate steward of capital and a partner that generates value,” Sutherland said. ACC Houston and The Texas Lawbook have named Phillips 66 as the recipients of the 2026 Houston Corporate Counsel Award for Legal Innovation.
In this Q&A with The Texas Lawbook, Vanessa Sutherland discusses the traits she seeks in outside counsel, what outside counsel need to know when working with her and more.
The evening before Thanksgiving last year, Energy and Minerals Group General Counsel Laura Tyson was working to close a $1.5 billion transaction when she learned that an investor had filed a lawsuit in Delaware to pause the deal. The litigation didn’t just threaten a transaction, it threatened the future of the company. Despite facing enormous challenges and extraordinarily tight deadlines, Tyson identified and hired a new legal team and put together their legal response to force the litigation into confidential arbitration only five days later.
EMG and Tyson won the litigation and closed the major continuation vehicle transaction. She is also the winner of the 2026 Houston Corporate Counsel Award for General Counsel of the Year for a Small Legal Department.
In this Q&A with The Texas Lawbook, Laura Tyson discusses the traits she seeks in outside counsel, what outside counsel need to know when working with her and more.
Most lawyers go a lifetime without winning a nine-digit litigation. Energy Transfer Assistant GC Ali Henderson won two in 2025. She co-led a complex, high-stakes trial in North Dakota that culminated in a historic $667 million jury verdict for the midstream energy giant. And she co-led the defense of a $200 million lawsuit against her company for negligence and trespass.
The Association of Corporate Counsel’s Houston Chapter and The Texas Lawbook are awarding Henderson, Energy Transfer and the lawyers at Yetter Coleman and Gibson Dunn with the 2026 Houston Corporate Counsel Award for Business Litigation of the Year. The Business Litigation award is one of the few that also recognizes the role of outside counsel in court victories.
Denise Hansen has dealt with the consequences from constantly evolving tariffs; the continuous and massive federal regulatory changes in the energy sector, including the dialing back of wind-industry tax credits; the executive orders regarding diversity and inclusion; the emergence and employment of artificial intelligence; the successful licensing necessary to do potential work in Venezuela; and the extraordinary growth that SEI has experienced.
The Association of Corporate Counsel’s Houston Chapter and The Texas Lawbook are honoring Hansen with the 2026 Houston Corporate Counsel Award for General Counsel of the Year for a Large Legal Department.
In this Q&A, Denise Hansen dives into AI and shares an easy ice breaker for conversation with her.
In this Q&A, Ali Henderson dispels myths about going in-house and details what she looks for when hiring outside counsel. Texas Lawbook: What advice do you give lawyers considering going
After meeting a lawyer at her elementary school’s career day, Cisselon Nichols Hurd went home and informed her mother she did not want to follow in her footsteps of becoming a teacher. She wanted to become a lawyer instead.
That’d be just fine, her mother replied.
Fast forward to 2009, and Hurd’s mother accompanied her to the U.S. Supreme Court, where Hurd helped steer a groundbreaking environmental case that narrowed seller liability, endorsed apportionment principles and remains a cornerstone to the Superfund practice.
The Association of Corporate Counsel’s Houston Chapter and The Texas Lawbook are honoring Hurd, Shell USA Senior Counsel, with the Achievement in Diversity and Inclusion award at the May 28 ceremony.
Cisselon Nichols Hurd highlights what makes for successful diversity efforts and describes a common challenge she observes when working with outside counsel at big firms.
Sara Keith is one of those people who seems to do it all and make it look effortless.
At Shell USA, where she serves as senior legal counsel of global litigation, Keith manages complex legal matters while also devoting significant time to pro bono work, mentoring young lawyers and leading service initiatives across Houston’s legal community — all while raising two daughters.
The Association of Corporate Counsel’s Houston Chapter and The Texas Lawbook are honoring Keith with the Harry Reasoner Pro Bono Advocacy Award at the 2026 Houston Corporate Counsel Awards on May 28.
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