Premium Subscriber Q&A: Victoria Nwankwo
In this Q&A with The Texas Lawbook, Victoria Nwankwo discusses the traits she seeks in outside counsel, what outside counsel need to know when working with her and more.
Senior Counsel Jane Ann Neiswender Helps Michaels Defend IP and Navigate Tariffs
For the past three years, Jane Ann Neiswender has been the deputy general counsel at Irving-based Michaels Stores, where she has helped guide the national specialty craft store chain through a digital transformation, helped purchase intellectual property of failed retail competitors and guided the business through significant supply chain issues related to recent tariffs placed on other countries.
“It is no secret that the retail industry has faced unchartered waters over the past 18 months, including consumer concern over the economy, an increasingly complex regulatory environment and new challenges stemming from tariffs,” she told The Texas Lawbook. “As a department, we work closely with the business to navigate these issues in a way that is compliant and provides our customers with the goods and value that they expect.”
Citing her extraordinary work and achievements during the past 18 months, the Association of Corporate Counsel’s DFW Chapter and The Lawbook have named Neiswender as a finalist for the 2025 DFW Corporate Counsel Award for Senior Counsel of the Year for a Midsized Legal Department (six to 20 attorneys).
Premium Subscriber Q&A: Jane Ann Neiswender
In this Q&A with The Texas Lawbook, Jane Ann Neiswender discusses the traits she seeks in outside counsel, what outside counsel need to know when working with her and more.
‘What Could Be Better?’: The Scratch-Golfer PGA Deputy GC Who Turned Passion into Profession
Ted Koehler has his dream job. And maybe yours.
He's a near-scratch golfer (a 0.90 handicap at the moment), a game he learned from his father. He makes his living advising the Professional Golfers' Association of America, the premier organization for more than 30,000 PGA professionals nationwide.
He gets to attend events like the PGA Championship and Ryder Cup. And because he's involved in their planning, it could be regarded as a job requirement. He gets to play some of the best golf courses in the world.
If dream jobs were golf balls, Koehler's has the feel of a 375-yard tee shot airmailed from a titanium driver, fairway-flush on the Par Five of Life.
As deputy general counsel in the PGA's three-attorney legal department, Koehler has been nominated by The Texas Lawbook and the DFW Chapter of the Association of Corporate Counsel as 2025 Senior Counsel of the Year for a Small Practice.
Premium Subscriber Q&A: Ted Koehler
In this Q&A with The Texas Lawbook, Ted Koehler discusses the traits he seeks in outside counsel, what outside counsel need to know when working with him and more.
Another Billion-Dollar Win for Keurig Dr Pepper, Another Nomination for Business Litigation of the Year
Two years ago, Stephen Cole reflected on his career as the vice president and assistant general counsel of Keurig Dr Pepper and was confident his best day at the company came after a summary judgment ruling resulted in a $925 million win against competitors Coca-Cola and BodyArmor.
But Cole, now a five-year veteran of KDP, has stayed busy ever since.
In July, the company’s legal team, along with outside counsel at Kirkland & Ellis, defeated a lawsuit from Reyes Coca-Cola Bottling that had been seeking more than $1 billion in damages over the ending of an agreement that had allowed Reyes to distribute Dr Pepper/Seven Up in California and Nevada.
Because of this work, the Association of Corporate Counsel’s Dallas-Fort Worth Chapter and The Texas Lawbook have named Cole a finalist for the 2025 DFW Corporate Counsel Award for Business Litigation of the Year.
Premium Subscriber Q&A: Stephen Cole
In this Q&A with The Texas Lawbook, Stephen Cole discusses the traits he seeks in outside counsel, what outside counsel need to know when working with him and more.
Children’s Health Assoc. GC Kathleen Benner’s ‘Impact will be Felt for Years to Come’
Kathleen Benner’s first job out of college, armed with a marketing degree, was traveling between manufacturing facilities to sell corrugated boxes.
“After about a year, I decided that if I wanted a more respectable and sustainable environment, I’d need a career change,” she told The Texas Lawbook.
Benner went to a bookstore and bought a book about whether to seek an MBA or a JD. “I didn’t even know what a JD was, but I read the book in one day and decided to go to law school,” she said. “That decision was validated almost immediately.”
Now the associate general counsel at Children’s Health System of Texas, Benner has been named as one of two finalists for the 2025 DFW Corporate Counsel Award for Senior Counsel of the Year for a Midsized Legal Department (six to 20 attorneys) by The Association of Corporate Counsel’s DFW Chapter and The Lawbook.
Premium Subscriber Q&A: Kathleen Benner
In this Q&A with The Texas Lawbook, Kathleen Benner discusses the traits she seeks in outside counsel, what outside counsel need to know when working with her and more.
Brinker’s Cam Turner: Father’s Wrongful Imprisonment Inspires Legal Excellence
Cameasha Turner was in the third grade when her mother told her the story of her father's wrongful conviction and life-prison sentence. “It was truly a life-altering moment for me. My dad was 18 when he was wrongfully convicted," Turner told The Texas Lawbook. "Hearing that as a child was heavy. I didn’t know how to process the shame or the hurt, but I did know one thing: It wasn’t right. Wanting justice for my dad is what sparked it, but understanding the power of education is what carried me the rest of the way."
More than two decades later, Cam Turner is corporate counsel at Dallas-based Brinker where she is making major decisions and achieving significant successes on the operations of the multibillion-dollar hospitality company whose restaurant brands include Chili’s and Maggiano’s Little Italy. The Association of Corporate Counsel’s DFW Chapter and The Lawbook have named Turner as a finalist for the 2025 DFW Corporate Counsel Award for Rookie of the Year, which is awarded to counsel who have been in-house for three years or less.
Premium Subscriber Q&A: Cam Turner
In this Q&A with The Texas Lawbook, Cameasha Turner discusses the traits she seeks in outside counsel, what outside counsel need to know when working with her and more.
Introducing Charles Schwab GC Peter Morgan — An Exclusive Q&A with The Texas Lawbook
Charles Schwab's relocation of its global headquarters, including its 150-member corporate legal department, from San Francisco to a 70-acre campus in Westlake’s Circle T Ranch development is complete, and by all accounts, the transition has been hugely successful. The move required a significant amount of infrastructure work by the legal department for Schwab, a multinational financial services company with more than 32,000 employees, $11 trillion in assets under management and a market cap of $178 billion.
“The move itself was real legal work, including banking charter conversions and building new relationships with Texas regulators and the Dallas Fed, and we found the same constructive, execution-oriented approach throughout,” Schwab General Counsel Peter Morgan told The Texas Lawbook in an exclusive interview.
Morgan said Schwab's hiring of two Dallas prominent lawyers — Winstead shareholder Michael O’Neal and Jones Day partner and former U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Regional Director Shamoil Shipchandler — were critical parts of the transition. In the interview, Morgan discusses the Texas legal and business markets and the challenges ahead.
Premium Subscriber Q&A: Shamoil Shipchandler
In this Q&A with The Texas Lawbook, Shamoil Shipchandler discusses the traits he seeks in outside counsel, what outside counsel need to know when working with him and more.
Schwab Chief Counsel Shamoil Shipchandler ‘Wouldn’t Trade Places with Anyone’
Shamoil Shipchandler scored landmark successes as a high-profile white-collar Texas prosecutor and the SEC’s top corporate cop pursuing financial criminals such as self-proclaimed frack master Christopher Faulkner and top executives at AriseBank. Shipchandler is still racking up major achievements as chief counsel at Charles Schwab where he leads a team of 15 lawyers and 11 other legal professionals.
“Most of the successes of my group cannot be publicly celebrated because they are confidential,” Shipchandler told The Texas Lawbook. “For example, closing nonpublic regulatory investigations or securing millions of dollars in FINRA arbitration victories.”
The Association of Corporate Counsel’s DFW Chapter and The Lawbook have named Shipchandler and his team at Schwab as a finalist for the 2025 DFW Corporate Counsel Award for DFW Corporate Legal Department of the Year.
Adapt or Be Replaced — The Future of In‑House Law in the Age of AI
When AI is embedded into daily workflows, processes such as contract review, compliance monitoring, risk analysis and knowledge management stop being bottlenecks and become sources of strategic leverage. That shift frees our teams to spend time where human judgment matters most. This article offers a practical roadmap for GCs: how to adopt AI safely, how to train people effectively and how to redesign processes with AI at the core — so the legal team can be a force multiplier for the business, not a brake.
CSW Industrials GC Luke Alverson: ‘A Business Leader that Brings Legal Skills to the Table’
Luke Alverson was a second-year associate at a large corporate firm with a nine-month-old daughter when his 23-year-old brother died in a car accident. “It hit me very hard. Losing Lance didn’t change my world view or values, but it certainly brought them into sharp focus," Alverson told The Texas Lawbook. “It was my ‘What do I want to be in my obituary?’ moment."
Alverson reevaluated his career and is now the GC at CSW, where he has worked on 17 M&A transactions during the past decade valued at more than $1 billion, including the October 2025 acquisition of heating and air-conditioning parts supplier Motors & Armatures Parts for $650 million. The Association of Corporate Counsel’s DFW Chapter and The Lawbook named Alverson as one of three finalists for the 2025 DFW Corporate Counsel Award for General Counsel of the Year for a Small Legal Department.
Premium Subscriber Q&A: Luke Alverson
In this Q&A with The Texas Lawbook, Luke Alverson discusses the traits he seeks in outside counsel, what outside counsel need to know when working with him and more.
Stephen Myers Leads Match Group in String of High-Stakes Wins
Last December, Match Group's Stephen Myers and his legal team convinced a federal judge to rule that a class action lawsuit accusing Match's Tinder app of being intentionally addictive and seeking hundreds of millions of dollars in damages needed to be handled by arbitration rather than a jury trial. None of the plaintiffs, however, pursued the dispute in arbitration. Match promoted Myers to associate GC and he responded with a handful of extraordinary successes in 2025, including obtaining a highly favorable settlement in a deceptive advertising practices case brought by the Federal Trade Commission and convincing a federal judge in Delaware to grant Match’s summary judgment motion in a long-running patent infringement case.
The ACC’s DFW Chapter and The Texas Lawbook have named Myers a finalist for the 2025 DFW Corporate Counsel Award for Senior Counsel of the Year for a Large Legal Department.
DFW Celebrates Two Legal In-house Rookies and a Lifetime Achiever
Elaine Rodriguez has been a corporate general counsel, including the past 14 years at DFW Airport, longer than Cameasha Turner and Nur Kara have been alive, but all three are being honored by the Association of Corporate Counsel’s DFW Chapter and The Texas Lawbook.
ACC-DFW and The Lawbook are pleased to announce that Rodriguez is being recognized with the 2025 DFW Corporate Counsel Award for Lifetime Achievement. Past DFW Lifetime Achievement Award recipients include Gary Kennedy of American Airlines, Leanne Oliver of PepsiCo, Chris Luna of T-Mobile, Derek Lipscombe of Toyota and Marita Covarrubias of Tenet Healthcare.
Turner, who is corporate counsel at Brinker International, and Kara, who is the legal director for marketing and advertising at PepsiCo North America, are the finalists for the 2025 DFW Corporate Counsel Award for Rookie of the Year.
2025 DFW Award Finalists: Senior In-house Counsel at Match, Michaels, Children’s Health, Dropbox and Caris Life Sciences
Six lawyers at North Texas companies have been named finalists for the 2025 DFW Corporate Counsel Awards for Senior Counsel of the Year. During the past week, ACC-DFW and The Texas Lawbook have announced the finalists for Business Litigation of the Year, M&A Transaction of the Year, General Counsel of the Year and Corporate Legal Department of the Year. The finalists for Rookie of the Year, Lifetime Achievement, Achievement in Pro Bono and Public Service and Achievement in Diversity and Inclusion will be announced later this week. The Lawbook has all the details.