Season Three provided more takeaways for enriching attorneys on “The Lasso Way.” And of course, more quotable pearls of wisdom.
Enbridge Hires Former Marathon Oil GC as its New CLO
Reggie Hedgebeth has been named as the next chief legal officer at Canadian-based midstream oil and giant company Enbridge Inc.
Corporate Policies on the Use of AI Tools: A Q&A with Yokogawa’s George Niño
While this exciting new AI technology is at the core of several useful applications, it is still developing and can provide inaccurate results. The use of these AI tools by companies also raises a number of legal, ethical, privacy and security risks. George Niño, the general counsel and corporate secretary for two Yokogawa companies, in this Q&A goes behind the scenes of the development of Yokogawa’s corporate AI policy.
Sempra Infrastructure CLO Carolyn Aiman: A Leader in ‘Extraordinary Times’
During her three decade career, Carolyn Aiman practiced litigation at a national corporate law firm, handled employment law at former oil giant Texaco, served as managing counsel over corporate governance and capital markets at global energy titan Shell and is now chief legal officer at Sempra Infrastructure. Along the way, Aiman has shepherded some groundbreaking energy initiatives, including Sempra Infrastructure’s $13 billion joint venture to develop, build and operate a project that would supply liquified natural gas to Europe. In addition, Aiman has pioneered innovative and highly successful diversity and inclusion efforts at Shell and Sempra.
In May, the Association of Corporate Counsel’s Houston Chapter and The Texas Lawbook recognized Aiman’s successes by honoring her with the 2023 Houston Corporate Counsel Award for Lifetime Achievement. This is her story.
In Wake of Harvard Supreme Court Decision, Kanarys Founder Provides Practical DEI Tips
As higher education circles, prospective students of color and mainstream media grapple with the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s affirmative action decision, so too does the legal industry. The Lawbook wanted a DEI expert’s take and got input from Kanarys founder Mandy Price, a Big Law attorney-turned DEI guru.
Talen Energy GC Moves Up, New GC Moves In, V&E Gets New GC
Three weeks after exiting bankruptcy, Talen Energy announced that GC Andrew Wright will be the company’s next chief administrative officer and V&E partner John Wander will be the energy firm’s next GC effective June 19. Wander also served as V&E’s internal GC. With his departure, the firm announced that partner Vanessa Griffith will be the Houston-based law firm’s new GC.
New Law Will Reshape Privacy Regulation in Texas
Over Memorial Day weekend, the Texas legislature passed the Texas Data Privacy and Security Act. Texas is now poised to join a rapidly growing list of U.S. states that have passed “comprehensive” privacy regulations, a trend that began in 2018 with the enactment of the California Consumer Privacy Act. The TPDSA will likely have a much broader impact than the similar laws enacted in Virginia, Utah, Colorado and Connecticut.
Meaningful Change Requires Personal Investment
As female attorneys who have worked in-house and in various firm environments, we have seen firsthand the challenges that women and marginalized communities face in the legal profession.
While there has been progress in recent years, there are still far too few female partners and other underrepresented leaders in the field, such that we can’t rely on structural and institutional change alone. More progress cannot occur without lawyers across the spectrum investing in the next generation of lawyers from underrepresented communities.
Joe Davidson – ‘A Proud Rice Owl’ Making a Difference
For 28 years, Joe Davidson has worked as an in-house lawyer at Rice University and is GC of Rice Management Company, the entity that includes Rice’s $7.8 billion endowment, which provides about 40 percent of the university’s operating revenues. His list of successes is long.
“My biggest accomplishments have been to be able to facilitate and support the big visions and thinking of Rice’s faculty, students and administrators — supporting them in obtaining research funding, conducting fieldwork, publishing their results and licensing them for further research and commercial development,” Davidson told The Texas Lawbook.
The Association of Corporate Counsel’s Houston Chapter and The Lawbook honored Davidson on May 4 with the 2023 Houston General Counsel of the Year Award for a Nonprofit Institution. This is his story.
Expert Voices: ‘Dear GC, You May Need to Amend Your Form Natural Gas Contracts’
The Uniform Commercial Code — in all its forms — tells us that the increased or unforeseen cost of selling a good alone does not excuse performance. After all, a rise in prices or the collapse of a given market is no justification, the UCC states, “for that is exactly the type of business risk which business contracts made at fixed prices are intended to cover.” But recent case law puts a finer point on the issue and may require lawyers to refine their form natural gas purchase and supply contracts to redefine force majeure in certain circumstances.
Big Winners 2023 Houston Corporate Counsel Awards: BMC Software, Brookfield, Sitio Royalties, Cactus, Ocean Point Terminals
The two finalists for the 2023 Houston General Counsel of the Year Award for Large, Small and Solo Legal Departments were each separated by one point in their respective categories. The finalists for Senior Counsel of the Year for a Midsized Legal Department were separated by a mere two points. On Thursday night, the Association of Corporate Counsel’s Houston Chapter and The Texas Lawbook announced the winners at the 2023 Houston Corporate Counsel Awards ceremony.
The names included Dionne Hamilton, Fred Day, Carolyn Benton Aiman, Amy Blumrosen, Raymond Chang, Rishi Varma, Jude Andre, Brett Riesenfeld, Mark Chavez, Pat Tagtow, Sarah Menendez, William Marsh, Averill Conn, Hakim Effiom-Dauw, Rob Ellis and Joe Davidson.
Baker Hughes’ Amy Blumrosen Fights For ‘Equity, Equality and Inclusion for All’
Amy Blumrosen is a jack of all trades, both in her litigation work in Baker Hughes’ legal department and in her work to improve diversity, equity and inclusion in the legal industry. She chairs the legal and compliance department’s DEI council at the company and outside of work has advocated for the LGBTQ community through her work with Lambda Legal, the Texas Minority Council Forum and more. She also fights inequities through volunteer work at the Houston Food Bank, Big Brothers Big Sisters, and more. All her efforts have landed her recognition by the Association of Corporate Counsel’s Houston Chapter and The Texas Lawbook as a finalist for the 2023 Houston Corporate Counsel Achievement in Diversity and Inclusion award.
“When she can’t get in through the door, she’s coming in through the window,” said Travis Torrence, a previous ACC winner and friend of Blumrosen. “If the window is closed, she’s going to break through the ceiling. Amy gets things done and achieves meaningful change.”
Blumrosen’s steadfast commitment to fight inequities comes from deep personal experience. This is her story.
Q&A: Amy Blumrosen, GLC of Baker Hughes
The Association of Corporate Counsel’s Houston chapter and The Texas Lawbook recently named Baker Hughes global litigation counsel Amy Blumrosen a finalist for the 2023 Houston Corporate Counsel Achievement in Diversity and Inclusion award.
In this Q&A, Blumrosen discusses with The Lawbook’s pro bono, public service and diversity writer Natalie Posgate how she approaches female attorney mentorship, why community and pro bono work is important in addition to DEI work and her views on where DEI is headed in the Texas corporate world.
Mark Chavez, GC of Ocean Point Terminals, Creates Success from an Environmental Mess in a Caribbean Paradise
When Mark Chavez was brought on board as general counsel at Ocean Point Terminals in June 2021, he knew he had his work cut out for him. Its major client, a refinery on the island of St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands, had been shut down by the EPA after a series of environmental incidents and was barreling towards bankruptcy. With the two companies bound together in service agreements that threatened both, all he had to do was negotiate a divorce with the other company, fend off four class-action lawsuits, defend dozens of other lawsuits, arrange more than $100 million in bridge financing and new capital, help re-permit the refinery and salvage the company’s relationship with its island neighbors.
He did it; pretty much all of it. And as a result, Mark Chavez is a finalist for GC of the Year for a Small Legal Department (five or less lawyers) in the 2023 Houston Corporate Counsel Awards.
Marilyn Moore Basso’s ‘Drive and Intelligence Put Her in the Top Tier of GCs’
TPC General Counsel Marilyn Moore Basso has faced some challenges the past couple of years. The petrochemical processor experienced a major explosion at its refinery in Port Neches. Next came the Covid-19 pandemic, followed by an unforeseen economic recession and a plunge in commodity prices. In February 2021, there was Winter Storm Uri, which brought subzero temperatures to Texas.
In June 2022, TPC Group filed for Chapter 11. Marilyn and her small legal team at TPC steered the company through a full restructuring in just six months. Her leadership and efforts on these matters have earned her the recognition of being named a finalist for the 2023 Houston Corporate Counsel Award for General Counsel of the Year for a Small Legal Department.
Mitsubishi’s Hakim Effiom-Dauw – ‘An Extraordinary Deal Lawyer’ Who Sets the Standard for Young In-house Lawyers
When Mitsubishi entered into a novel multibillion-dollar joint venture agreement with two other energy giants to develop and build a project that captures, transports and stores carbon dioxide, the global giant turned to a rising star in its legal department, Hakim Effiom-Dauw to help it identify and address risks and challenges. The development of Hackberry Carbon Sequestration is only one of several successes for Hakim during the three years with Mitsubishi and one of the reasons ACC’s Houston Chapter and The Texas Lawbook honor Effiom-Dauw with the 2023 Houston Corporate Counsel Award for Rookie of the Year.
Southwestern Energy’s Rob Ellis: ‘An Impressive Mix of Smarts and Emotional Intelligence’
As assistant general counsel of Southwestern Energy, Rob Ellis has notched big victories. None bigger than last October when Ellis and his team of lawyers at Yetter Coleman sued a chemical company whose operations on the West Virginia side of the Ohio River allegedly trespassed and interfered with the underground drilling operations of a Southwestern Energy subsidiary. A three-week trial resulted in a unanimous verdict awarding Ellis’ company $70 million in damages. Citing the huge courtroom victory and his service to the greater Houston community, the Association of Corporate Counsel’s Houston chapter and The Texas Lawbook have awarded Ellis the 2023 Houston Corporate Counsel Award for Senior Counsel of the Year for a Small Legal Department (five or fewer lawyers).
Jeff McNabb: Patterson-UTI’s ‘Offensive Coordinator’
Jeff McNabb’s destiny to be a trial lawyer started in the first grade when his teacher conducted an impromptu trial and appointed McNabb to represent a fellow student involved in a playground argument. Now decades later, McNabb is head of litigation for Patterson-UTI Management, where he won two major courtroom victories in 2022 — one against former employees who allegedly took the company’s confidential information and the other involving an insurance coverage dispute for several underlying worksite injuries.
Citing McNabb’s leadership in those cases, the Association of Corporate Counsel’s Houston Chapter and The Texas Lawbook recognize him as a finalist for the 2023 Houston Corporate Counsel Award for Senior Counsel of the Year for a Midsized Legal Department.
For Brookfield’s Fred Day, ‘No Fire Drills’ Just Multibillion Dollar Deals
As a rookie deal lawyer, Fred Day’s first transaction in 2007 was valued at more than $1 billion. In the 15 years since, Day has handled dozens of M&A and capital markets transactions with combined price tags exceeding $100 billion. No year in his career, however, matches the magnitude of 2022.
As managing director at Brookfield Asset Management, Day led six major infrastructure deals last year with a combined dollar value of more than $55 billion, including a $30 billion “first-of-its-kind” JV with Intel Corp. for a semiconductor fabrication facility in Arizona. As a result, Day is a finalist for the 2023 Houston Corporate Counsel Award for Senior Counsel of the Year for a Midsized Legal Department.
Vitol’s Averill Conn is at ‘the Intersection of Energy and New Technology’
Averill Conn has spent the past 29 months at Vitol, where she played a key role in the acquisition of three wind farms in Pennsylvania and another in Illinois, the establishment of Vitol’s solar and battery storage development platform, the negotiation of a long-term Renewable Energy Certificates purchase agreement with Meta Inc. in connection with a solar project in California, the negotiation of long-term virtual power and purchase agreements of utility-scale solar facilities in the Northeast involving AT&T and Vitol’s investment in FlexGen Power Systems, a software technology provider for energy storage solutions.
Citing Conn’s extraordinary success, the Houston Chapter of the Association of Corporate Counsel and The Texas Lawbook award the Vitol Associate GC with the 2023 Houston Corporate Counsel Award for Senior Counsel of the Year for a Large Legal Department.
When it Comes to Diversity & Inclusion, HPE ‘Just Gets It’
Over the last several years, general counsel Rishi Varma and associate general counsel Jude Andre have implemented a number of diversity initiatives at Hewlett Packard Enterprise, whose corporate legal department is known for its innovation, welcoming culture and commitment to advancing diversity, equity and inclusion in the legal profession. The result has been a more engaged workforce around DEI issues and recognition by the Association of Corporate Counsel’s Houston Chapter and The Texas Lawbook. They have named HPE — with Varma and Andre at the helm — as finalists for the 2023 Houston Corporate Counsel Award for Achievement in Diversity and Inclusion award.