Texas GC Forum Names Magna Stella Winners
Corporate in-house counsel from companies including Flowserve, NexTier, Pinnacle Propane and Seabed Geosolutions are among the recipients of the 2020 Magna Stella Awards.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Toyota’s Scott Young Receives Texas Access to Justice Award
The Texas Access to Justice Commission has presented its 2020 Corporate Counsel Pro Bono Award to Toyota Managing Counsel Scott Young. Texas Supreme Court Justice Eva Guzman said Young "has an unwavering commitment to pro bono work."
Five Texas GCs Ask Congress to Increase Legal Aid Funding
The chief legal officers at AT&T, Dell, Kimberly-Clark, LyondellBasell and Pioneer Natural Resources joined colleagues from across the U.S. in asking the U.S. Congress to significantly raise the amount of funding it provides to the Legal Services Corporation.
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.
CenterPoint, ETP, Prosperity Bank – More 2020 Houston Corp. Counsel Award Winners
They are general counsel who engineered major mergers, acquisitions and restructurings and senior counsel who won bet-the-company litigation. They are corporate in-house counsel preaching diversity and pro bono activities in the legal profession. ACC’s Houston Chapter and The Texas Lawbook are honored to announce the final six recipients.
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.
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.
2020 Houston Corporate Counsel Awards Winners Announced
The Association of Corporate Counsel’s Houston Chapter and The Texas Lawbook are honored to announce the 2020 Houston Corporate Counsel Awards recipients. Eleven of the 13 winners are women. One-third are lawyers of color. One is a previous finalist and one is a back-to-back winner. Three winners are from the same business. Six of the in-house counsel work at energy related companies. Pictured: Veronica Foley of Precision Drilling.
‘STOP and Read this Story. This is my Black Son’s Life’
UPDATED: Sonic officials late Thursday apologized directly to the families of seven African-American teenagers for the discriminatory treatment they endured at one of the company's North Dallas drive-in restaurants. The parents included a Dallas judge and several prominent in-house lawyers. Natalie Posgate's update includes the full text of Sonic's public statement.
Dykema Employer Survey Examines Return-to-Work Issues
Much has been written about what steps employers can and should take in the face of the global pandemic. In an effort to better understand what employers actually are doing, Dykema recently sent a flash survey to employers. Here is an analysis of the results.
GC Brandy Treadway Leads J.C. Penney into Chapter 11
On Page 15 of J.C. Penney Company’s bankruptcy filing Friday late afternoon, there is the signature of the corporation’s general counsel and corporate secretary, Brandy Treadway. “Attached hereto is a true, complete, and correct copy of the resolutions of the Board of Directors of the Company.” Here is a profile of J.C. Penney's GC, who will play a critical role in the retailer's restructuring.
Low Tax Revenues, Interest Rates Sap Legal Aid Funds
The two-fisted beating of an coronavirus shutdown and an oil market crash is begetting yet another crisis on the horizon in Texas: the need for legal aid. Zero interest rates and dwindling tax revenues are sapping low-income legal resources, even as the need for them is set to explode. "That's the next big story," says SCOTX Chief Justice Nathan Hecht. Janet Elliott explains.
Arnold Ventures’ Roxanne Almaraz – A GC doing ‘Personally Meaningful’ Legal Work
Roxanne Almaraz was four when she told her parents that she planned to be either a lawyer or a cardiothoracic surgeon. Thirty-five years later, she is the general counsel of a multibillion-dollar philanthropic and public policy-oriented LLC in Houston. Along the way, Almaraz worked on some major energy M&A transactions. This is her story.
Chasity Henry Joins CECO Environmental as GC
Chasity Henry, a veteran of the Kimberly-Clark and Dr Pepper Snapple legal departments, officially moved into the corporate C-suite Monday as a general counsel of Dallas-based CECO Environmental. At age 39, Henry is widely recognized as one of the leading voices on diversity in the legal profession.