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GCs/Corp. Legal Depts.

2020 DFW Outstanding Corporate Counsel Award Nominations

The COVID-19 pandemic and the crisis in the oil patch have meant difficult times for many businesses. Through all of this, corporate general counsel and senior counsel at companies across North Texas have been called upon to do the best legal work of their careers. The Association of Corporate Counsel’s Dallas/Fort Worth Chapter and The Texas Lawbook seek to identify and honor those in-house counsel for the great legal work and leadership they performed in 2020.

Mark Curriden

2020 Houston Corp. Counsel Award: How Mindy Harper Won the Mattress Wars

Mattress Firm senior counsel Mindy Harper had been on the job only a few months when the Houston bedding company became embroiled in a multi-year, bet-the-company dispute that was litigating in 14 states - all happening as Mattress Firm went through a $3 billion bankruptcy and restructuring. “Mindy was the quintessential ‘grace under fire’ since the date she started at the company,” Houston lawyer John Thomas said.

Mark Curriden

Q&A: Mindy Harper

The Texas Lawbook provides unique, substantive and exclusive content to our Premium subscribers. In the interview, Mattress Firm Senior Counsel Mindy Harper provides personal insight into her life, how she selects outside counsel and key things outside counsel should know about her.

Mark Curriden

Mattress Firm’s Daria Russell: ‘Takes a Holistic Approach to Problem-solving and Never Cuts Corners’

Daria Russell is the granddaughter of sharecroppers. She worked hard, went to Harvard Law and worked at a global law firm. Now she is senior counsel at Mattress Firm where she has handled more than a dozen M&A deals and guided the retailer through bankruptcy restructuring. She is also the 2020 Houston Corporate Counsel's Senior Counsel of the Year for a Small Legal Department. This is Daria Russell's story.

Includes link to special Q&A for Premium Subscribers Only, including what Russell looks for in outside counsel.

Mark Curriden

Kindel Nuno Q&A: ‘I Have No Money and No Time’

In a special feature for Premium Subscribers, Kindel Nuno discusses with Mark Curriden, founder of The Texas Lawbook, her life mentors, her best and worst days at Mattress Firm, her criteria for hiring outside counsel, important things to consider for the lawyers she hires and her biggest challenges ahead.

Mark Curriden

GC Kindel Nuno Leads Mattress Firm Through Crises and Minefields

Mattress Firm GC Kindel Nuno does not mince words about December 2017: “It was horrible – among the worst days of my professional career." Nuno had led MF through two-dozen M&A deals to make it a national bedding retailer with 3,600 stores and $3 billion in revenues. But then, Mattress Firm's parent company was accused of accounting fraud and the Houston retailer was staring at bankruptcy. Thankfully, MF had Nuno as its legal guide.

Includes link to special Q&A for Premium Subscribers Only.

Mark Curriden

Jing Bian ‘Proves that Nice People Can Finish First’

International corporate mergers often hinge on the meaning of a single term or the interpretation of a response. Enter Energy Transfer senior counsel Jing Bian, a Chinese-born, Harvard Law-educated M&A lawyer used her knowledge of Chinese culture and fluency in Mandarin to help guide the pipeline giant through a crucial joint venture. Citing Bian’s extraordinary success in less than two years in-house, Jing Bian is the 2020 Houston Corporate Counsel Awards Rookie of the Year.

Mark Curriden

Q&A: Kevin McDonald

Citing his extraordinary leadership and legal acumen throughout the merger, the Association of Corporate Counsel’s Houston Chapter and The Texas Lawbook have awarded the 2020 Houston Corporate Counsel General Counsel of the Year for a Midsized Legal Department to NetTier General Counsel and Chief Administrative Officer Kevin McDonald.

Mark Curriden

Veronica Foley Is Precision Drilling’s ‘Key to Success’

Veronica Foley was five when her grandfather, a lawyer in Columbia, was assassinated for being a political activist. The family lived in constant fear. She took different routes to school daily. Nearly four decades later, Foley is the general counsel at Precision Drilling. She and lawyers at Norton Rose Fulbright last year won a heated 8-year FLSA battle that could have been devastating for the Houston company. Foley and the law firm are the recipients of the 2020 Houston Corporate Counsel Business Litigation of the Year Award. The Texas Lawbook has the exclusive inside story.

Mark Curriden

GC Leanne Oliver’s Long and Winding Road to Law and Corporate America

Leanne Oliver could write the ultimate guide to girls about growing up. She lived in hippie communes, an old blue-green school bus, in the woods of North Idaho, in a 100-year-old log cabin and then back on the old school bus. That was just in elementary school. Today, Oliver is the GC of PepsiCo Foods North America and one of the most influential voices in the Texas corporate law community. She has a story to tell and she tells it to The Texas Lawbook.

Mark Curriden

Jared Sine’s So Far, So Good, Very Remarkable Year

While the rest of us have been dodging disaster, Jared Sine has been having a very, very good year. After settling with Bumble, the chief legal officer for Match helped guide the company through a reverse-split from Barry Diller’s IAC. Even in the best of times, it’s a complicated transaction that requires intense attention, a firm sense of direction and lots of luck. But add to that an economic collapse and a global pandemic and you ... well, Sine explains what it took to The Texas Lawbook.

Allen Pusey

Eco-Bat Hires Daniel Terrell as new GC

Fresh out of bankruptcy, Dallas-based Eco-Bat Technologies has hired former Stream Energy general counsel and Baker Botts special counsel Daniel Terrell as the company’s first chief legal officer.

Mark Curriden

Northwest Texas Legal Aid Celebrates Women Advocacy Awards, Needs Funding

Texas Chief Justice Nathan Hecht says domestic abuse cases are “up quite a bit” during the past 15 weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic, but there are not enough lawyers doing pro bono to help abused women and children. The chief justice’s comments came during a webcast conducted by the Legal Aid of Northwest Texas, which celebrated the 2020 Women’s Advocacy Awards.

Mark Curriden

7-Eleven and Perkins Coie Win 2020 ACC Value Champions Awards

The Association of Corporate Counsel has announced that 7-Eleven and the law firm Perkins Coie have been named one of its annual 2020 Value Champions, a national honor that recognizes innovative technology and the use of creative operating systems to enhance efficiency and value in corporate legal departments.

Mark Curriden

Eight Words: ‘You Need to Stay Out of This Neighborhood’

Julia Simon's son was jogging a few blocks from the North Dallas home the family has lived in for 20 years, when a white woman saw him and screamed. The message was clear, but it took a while to fully sink in. The Mary Kay CLO explains to Natalie Posgate how the incident shook her family.

Natalie Posgate

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