Solitary confinement nearly 24 hours a day without adequate recreational time is violating the federal and state constitutional rights of 185 male Texas inmates on death row, according to a new lawsuit in Houston federal court. The suit also says current prison conditions don’t allow for adequate medical attention or legal assistance. Natalie Posgate has the details.
P.S. — Dallas Legal Clinics Announced for Feb; A Bankruptcy Becomes Charitable — UPDATED
In this week’s P.S., Natalie Posgate highlights a sizable donation one firm and one company gave to the Houston Food Bank, upcoming free legal clinics in Dallas and a group of new sponsors of the Lawbook Foundation.
Mark Berg & Barry Thomas: Improving Lives Across Texas
Barry Thomas and Mark Berg have many things in common. They’re both M&A lawyers by training. They’ve both handled multibillion-dollar deals in the oil patch together as high-ranking colleagues at Pioneer Natural Resources. Beyond their professional accolades, they’re both committed to public service. Berg has helped Dallas CASA significantly grow in order to achieve its goal of serving every abused and neglected child in need on the Dallas County child welfare docket. And Thomas volunteers his free time serving as general counsel of the Permian Strategic Partnership, a coalition of 20 oil and gas companies committed to improving the roads, workforce, healthcare, schools and housing of the rural West Texas and New Mexico communities that the Permian Basin encompasses.
What else do they have in common? Tonight, they’ll both will walk a stage in the George W. Bush Presidential Center to accept the 2022 DFW Corporate Counsel Award for Pro Bono and Public Service Award.
Q&A: Mark Berg and Barry Thomas
As winners of the 2022 DFW Corporate Counsel Award for Pro Bono and Public Service, Mark Berg and Barry Thomas have more in common than the fact that they are high-ranking colleagues at Pioneer Natural Resources: They are both committed to leveraging their time and talents for the betterment of others.
Pro Bono Writer Natalie Posgate had the opportunity to chat with Berg and Thomas both about their pro bono projects and about ways that readers of The Texas Lawbook can help.
For GM’s Juli Greenberg, DEI is ‘Part of her DNA’
General Motors counsel Juli Greenberg was sitting in a conference room in 2018 getting CLE ethics credit when everything changed. What she learned sent her on a quest to create DEI initiatives and do her part to improve the diversity pipeline in the legal profession.
Fast forward nearly five years, and the product of Greenberg’s work has reached hundreds of people from every stage of the pipeline. She’s also the recipient of the 2022 DFW Corporate Counsel Award for Achievement in Diversity and Inclusion.
A Word with Human Trafficking Institute’s Victor Boutros
Victor Boutros knew he wanted to devote his legal career to combatting human trafficking before he even got to law school. Now more than two decades later, after working in private practice, serving as a federal prosecutor and writing a book, Boutros leads the Human Trafficking Institute, which partners with foreign governments to help them implement trafficking enforcement systems.
The Texas Lawbook recently sat down with Boutros and will cover a CLE later today in Dallas about human trafficking trends and updates and how lawyers can get involved. More details, including how to register, in this article.
P.S. — Casino Nights, Running Tights, Calling All Trivia Brights
A fun run in Houston that benefits people with intellectual disabilities. A CLE on human trafficking. A casino night that benefits abused and neglected children. A trivia night that benefits legal aid. Natalie Posgate details them all in this week’s P.S.
P.S. — 5Ks, Housebuilding & Fair Debt Collection
A grant that will help consumer debt defendants in Texas. A 5K that helps women struggling with substance abuse. A new board appointment for the Austin Habitat for Humanity. A major Texas corporation recognizes a law firm for it diversity efforts. All in this week’s P.S. Firms featured this week include Gibson Dunn and Winstead.
‘All People Have Significance’
On the first page of the opening chapter in my book Contempt of Court: A Turn of the Century Lynching That Launched a Hundred Years of Federalism, there is this single sentence: “Ed Johnson was not a significant man, except in the sense that all people have significance.”
Johnson was a Black man who couldn’t read or write, worked two jobs to survive in Chattanooga, Tennessee in 1906 who was falsely arrested for a rape he did not commit, railroaded through the criminal justice system and sentence to death – all in three weeks.
The Texas Lawbook this year created a full-time writer position to do nothing but cover pro bono and public service by lawyers in Texas. Natalie Posgate writes about corporate lawyers tackling big issues for military veterans, the homeless and those trapped in sex trafficking. She also writes about how a Texas lawyer can in just four hours dramatically change a single mom’s life for the better.
Natalie Posgate’s columns show lawyers that “all people have significance.”
P.S. — Legal Aid Grants in TX, Happy Holidays, Causes ‘For the Kids’
This week’s P.S. highlights one Houston lawyers organization’s Adopt-an-Angel program, grant money awarded to two Texas legal aid organizations and a firm celebrating an exciting pro bono milestone.