Luke Alverson was a second-year corporate associate at Vinson & Elkins in 2006 with a nine month-old daughter when his 23-year-old brother died in a car accident.
“It hit me very hard and came at a very formative stage of my life,” Alverson told The Texas Lawbook in an interview. “Losing Lance didn’t change my world view or values, but it certainly brought them into sharp focus. With a fresh appreciation for how precious and short life is, it prompted me to get very clear about my long-term personal and professional goals.”
“It was my ‘What do I want to be in my obituary?’ moment,” he said.
Alverson reevaluated his career, joined a smaller law firm that offered him a more direct relationship with business clients, which quickly opened the door to in-house counsel opportunities.
Since becoming the general counsel at CSW Industrials a decade ago, Alverson has worked on 17 M&A transactions valued at more than $1 billion, including the October 2025 acquisition of heating and air-conditioning parts supplier Motors & Armatures Parts for $650 million.
Alverson said “being part of a leadership team that has generated incredible growth and delivered tremendous value for our shareholders over the last 10 years” has been extremely rewarding.
“From the time I joined the company, we have quadrupled our revenue, and we’ve added a zero to our stock price,” he said. “Not many executives have the honor of being part of a team that has performed at such a high level.”
The Association of Corporate Counsel’s DFW Chapter and The Texas 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, which is two to five attorneys.
The 2025 DFW Corporate Counsel Awards ceremony will be Jan. 29.
“Luke exemplifies what the GC of the Year award is meant to recognize: an enterprise-minded public company GC who delivers outsized impact with limited resources, enabling sustained growth, disciplined risk management and best-in-class governance,” said A&O Shearman partner Robert Cardone, who nominated Alverson for the award. “Since joining CSW Industrials in 2016, shortly after the company’s 2015 spin-off from Capital Southwest, he has served as both legal steward and strategic catalyst, helping transform a newly independent issuer into a disciplined, acquisition-savvy diversified industrial growth company with a durable operating model and strong market reputation.”
Cardone, who was lead outside counsel for CSW in the MARS Parts acquisition, said the transaction was especially complex due to its “carve out nature.” The deal officially closed Nov. 4.
“These accomplishments reflect a general counsel who delivers sustained, enterprise-scale value from a small-department platform, with a track record of disciplined M&A execution, strong governance and business-first judgment that advances CSW Industrials’ strategic objectives,” he said.
CSW Industrials CEO Joseph Armes told The Lawbook that Alverson “has complete command of the legal issues that we face as a global enterprise with over 3,000 employees.”
“He manages internal and external resources expertly to efficiently meet the needs of our growing business,” Armes said. “Luke’s keen focus on the business and his impressive ability to understand and address business issues sets him apart from most legal professionals. Finally, Luke has earned the trust of the board of directors serving as our corporate secretary. Directors want to hear from Luke before making any important decisions.”
“Luke is highly respected in our organization as a full business partner to our segment leaders,” Armes said. “His opinion is sought out and highly valued by his peers. Luke would be very successful leading a much larger legal department at a much larger company. However, he is dedicated to our distinctive employee value proposition and is a strong advocate for our commitment to treating our employees with dignity and respect.
Alverson is a seventh-generation Texan. Born in Houston, he grew up with a dad who worked in the petrochemicals industry — first as a lab supervisor in the oil patch and later as a refinery turnaround specialist. His mom stayed home to raise their children, but also volunteered with the nonprofit Justice for Children.
Because of his father’s work, the family moved frequently, spending years in Midland, Houston, Lafayette, La., and then back to Houston.
Premium Subscriber Q&A: Luke Alverson discusses the traits he seeks in outside counsel, what outside counsel need to know when working with him and more.
“Frequent relocations for young children, especially once they hit school age, can be very tough, and it certainly was for me at times,” he said. “While it was sometimes challenging to form meaningful friendships and fostered some anxiety about when we were going to be moving again, I think learning how to deal with constant change and uncertainty at a young age ultimately made me very adaptable and resilient. As a result, there isn’t much that phases me professionally.”
Alverson’s original interest in law stems from his mother’s work with Justice for Children.
“I had the opportunity to see what the practice of law looked like, at least in the family law context, and as much as I could understand of it at a young age,” he said. “I think my mom saw my natural bent for problem solving and advocacy even when I was young, and she gave me a lot of encouragement to explore the vocation. I later got some exposure to in-house lawyers when she was working as a legal assistant, who were also influential for me.”
But law took a backseat in high school and college as “competitive golf consumed most of my time.”
Alverson attended Abilene Christian University on a golf scholarship. He studied finance and accounting as an undergraduate and then worked in the M&A financial advisory space in Houston after graduating.
“While working on deals, I got a lot of exposure to transactional lawyers, and that old interest in law got rekindled,” he said. “I was fascinated by their role in transactions and felt compelled to learn more about it. I had been planning to pursue a post-graduate degree of some sort, and that’s when I decided law school was going to be the path.”
Getting married to “a Fort Worth girl” led him to focus his future on North Texas. He was selected as a Hatton W. Sumners Scholar at the SMU Dedman School of Law, where he earned his law degree in 2004.
Alverson spent more than three years in V&E’s Dallas office learning the M&A and corporate securities practice before joining Hallett & Perrin in 2006.
“It was a great decision, and I was enjoying the opportunity to work with smaller clients, many of which did not have in-house legal departments,” he said. “That dynamic provided more direct access to clients’ executive teams and provided the opportunity to participate in business decision-making processes. It’s where I got my counseling ‘legs’ under me.”
In 2008, Alverson received a call from Kelly Noblin of Newhouse Noblin. They knew each other from SMU, where he was a student and Noblin served in the law school’s administration. Noblin was seeking candidates for a senior securities counsel position at Flowserve.
“While I was a bit junior to be considered an ideal candidate for the role, she thought I would be a great fit and encouraged me to apply,” he said. “I wasn’t really looking at the time, but the idea of in-house practice held some appeal for me, and I decided to give it a shot.”
“It didn’t take me long to realize I had found my path,” he said. “I immediately saw the opportunity to bring my business acumen and legal skills together in a meaningful way, using them both to add value to a vibrant, global organization and have a lot of fun doing it. Thankfully they decided to take a chance on me, and it turned out to be a great fit.”
Over eight years, Alverson trained under two Flowserve GCs — Ron Shuff and, later, Carey O’Connor.
“Both of whom took a personal interest in me and my development,” he said. “Over the years, I was able to take on additional responsibilities, at first in an individual contributor role, then later as AGC and team leader. Additionally, and very early on in my time there, I was given a seat in the boardroom, both in an assistant secretarial role and as a regular presenter. I cannot overstate how much of an accelerant that was for my professional development.”
In late 2015, Alverson received a call from Flowserve’s former assistant controller, who had left six months earlier to take the controller position at CSW Industrials. The company was preparing for its spin-off from Capital Southwest Corporation. CSW was looking for a general counsel to start the legal department for the new public company.
“In considering the role with CSW, my evaluation rubric was simple, with two overarching questions to answer: Will this organization be a good long-term cultural fit for me, and will I be able to add value?” Alverson said.
It helped that CSW’s CEO, Joe Armes, was also an SMU Law alum.
“When Joe shared the history of CSW’s operating companies and his growth vision for the new company, I was immediately drawn in,” Alverson said. “The growth strategy was — and still is — aggressive with a heavy emphasis on inorganic growth, which was incredibly attractive to me. It was easy for me to see that, with the right leadership team, CSW had a platform that would be incredibly well positioned to bring that strategy to fruition. Given the professional expertise and leadership abilities I had developed to that point, I also saw that I would be able to add tremendous value to this newly public company as it worked through its growing pains.”
Alverson said there has been “constant evolution in both the position and the work” during his 10 years at CSW.
“Building a legal department in an organization that had little to no prior interaction with in-house lawyers, or expectations around what we can or should be doing for them, provided a tremendous opportunity paired with a sizeable challenge,” he said. “In addition, almost all of our outside counsel relationships needed to be reevaluated to ensure good fit with our new standalone public company demands.”
In the early days with CSW, Alverson said, “we all wore a lot of different hats.”
In addition to serving as the GC and corporate secretary, he handled executive compensation and compliance.
“It was incredibly challenging,” he said. “I had come from a larger, more mature organization and was used to having ample resources at my disposal. Even if I had the budget to handle all the work we needed to get done at the time, which I didn’t, I didn’t have the time to manage all of it properly. That forced sharp focus on ensuring that my efforts were prioritized on matters of high strategic importance and/or risk.”
In 2018, Alverson hired Shae Urbauer-Brau as CSW’s senior commercial counsel, which allowed Alverson to focus on strategic M&A.
In 2020, CSW completed the acquisition of TRUaire, a leading manufacturer of grilles, registers and diffusers.
“That was a game-changer for our organization,” he said. “It was by far the biggest acquisition we had ever done, and with the addition of owned manufacturing and a sizeable employee population in Vietnam, it made us a true global company. The overnight increase in scale that it brought to our organization helped reshape our strategic focus and thereby the resources we needed for growth.”
Egan Nelson partner Michael Colvin said Alverson “seeks to find pragmatic business solutions to problems but also knows where to draw the line.” He said Alverson has a tremendous ability to communicate.
“He describes the business case for the projects he is asking from us to give us a sense of what is important and continuously communicates so that together we operate as a singular team,” Colvin said. “CSW was formed as a conglomeration of diverse businesses from a series of acquisitions. Not only has Luke managed to navigate those acquisitions, he has been able to integrate those diverse businesses into a single legal framework, providing centralized legal services. This has required the CSW legal team to quickly adapt to meet the needs of a wide-ranging group of clients.”
Alverson and the CSW team scored two huge successes in 2025.
In June, the company transferred its stock listing from the NASDAQ to the New York Stock Exchange.
Then there was the MARS Parts acquisition in October and November. It was CSW’s largest acquisition to date, almost by a factor of two, and brought CSW’s total investment in acquisitions to more than $1.7 billion.
“I’m intimately involved in every acquisition we evaluate and pursue, and I’m ultimately responsible for ensuring the deals we want to get done actually get done and are positioned for a successful integration,” he said. “Any acquisition involves a tremendous collaborative team effort, and in my seat, I have the privilege of seeing all of the deal workstreams from all our functional areas come together to identify opportunities and risks for the particular acquisition we’re pursuing. My biggest value add in the acquisition context is being able to take all of that information and help craft a transaction structure and key deal terms, using the right deal team players and resources, that accomplish our objectives, consistent with our strategy and risk tolerance.”
“It was an acquisition in size, valuation and complexity that, through the strength of our strategic execution over the years and the trust we’ve built with our stakeholders, we ‘earned the right’ to be able to do,” he said. “MARS Parts helped address certain gaps in our HVAC/R accessories product portfolio and also strengthened existing product offerings, while providing meaningful cost and commercial synergy opportunities.”
Alverson said that he was trained at Flowserve to “be a business leader that brings legal skills to the table.”
“While that may be a bit cliché, I took it to heart. And that’s the mindset I’ve always taken, both in my own development and in the development of the lawyers I’ve had the privilege of leading,” he said. “To be effective as an in-house lawyer, you need to be able to influence your internal clients well, and you do that through building trust.”
“Most importantly, we must then execute with excellence to deliver value to the organization that provides a meaningful return on the investment it makes in us,” Alverson said. “My team members hear me say often that we, as the legal department, have no inherent right to exist — we earn that right every day by the value we deliver.”
Fun Facts: Luke Alverson
- Favorite book: The Bible is at the top of the list. I’m an avid reader — usually 20 to 30 books a year — so it’s tough to name a favorite. But I really enjoy the legal thriller genre — John Grisham, Scott Pratt. If I had to pick one book, I’d say John Maxwell’s 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership.
- Favorite music group: Metallica
- Favorite movie: Interstellar and The Shawshank Redemption
- Favorite restaurant: Del Frisco’s Double Eagle in downtown Fort Worth. Dry-aged New York strip is tough to beat.
- Favorite beverage: Diet Dr Pepper
- Favorite vacation: Family trip we took to Kauai several years ago. Mountains, beach, hiking, golf — all the things I love.
- Hero in life: I have a lot of people in my life that I respect and admire for different reasons, but I somewhat intentionally don’t put the “hero” tag on anyone.