Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury
Individual workout and meditation rooms and Pelotons, plus an Icee machine and Houston Rockets Pop-A-Shot. Akin Gump’s revamped Houston office has them all. The Texas Lawbook sat down with Houston leaders at Akin Gump and Gensler to discuss what it takes to shepherd the “office of the next generation” and glean early reviews from attorneys and clients.
Publisher’s Note: This article is a sponsored partnership with Gensler.
The firm, which hit record profits last year, has 50% more employees since it first made the move to Ross Tower and expects to move to the new space in the fall of 2023.
The top lawyers at Jacobs Engineering Group, Southwest Airlines and El Rancho Supermercado spent Tuesday’s lunch hour speaking about multiple aspects of diversity within the legal profession — what diversity means for them and their organizations, why it’s important in both the in-house and outside counsel context and how it could be improved. The Lawbook attended the event, which was organized by the Dallas Regional Chamber, hosted by UNT Dallas College of Law and sponsored by Munsch Hardt and Carrington Coleman.
Corporate law firms should not ignore nor routinely dismiss threats made last week by Texas Republican legislators that they will punish law partners who fund travel for Texas employees who go to other states to have abortions. Leading academic experts who studied the Texas Freedom Caucus letter to Sidley say law firms “should treat this like any other legal challenge” and “throw all the resources and knowledge they have … to analyze any potential legal risk than a collection of legislators who don’t seem to understand what the law is or how the law works.”
A handful of conservative Republicans are threatening corporate law firms operating in Texas with criminal prosecution, civil sanctions and even disbarment if they play any role in their Texas employees going out of state to get abortions. Texas Freedom Caucus accuses the global law firm Sidley Austin of being “complicit in illegal abortions” and assert the “consequences that you and your colleagues will face for these actions.” But leaders at several law firms tell The Texas Lawbook that the threats are “extreme political debauchery and legally dubious.”
Chicago firm McDermott, Will & Emery has opened an Austin office with the hiring of eight intellectual property partners from Baker Botts. It’s the firm’s third office in Texas and 22nd worldwide.
The Dallas Hispanic Law Foundation last week honored 18 Texas law students with its annual scholarships, bar study grants and internships. The Lawbook reveals this year’s recipients and breaks down why they were chosen.
In the largest corporate law firm merger of 2022, Houston-based personal injury defense law firm Lorance Thompson announced Thursday that it has merged with Mayer LLP, a Dallas-based business law boutique. Lorance Thompson’s 22 attorneys officially started June 1 with Mayer, a three-and-a-half-year-old law firm that now has more than 90 lawyers in Dallas, Houston, Albuquerque and Fayetteville.
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