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AUSTIN – Varsity Brands Chief Legal Officer Burton Brillhart told the 400 corporate lawyers attending the Texas General Counsel Forum’s Magna Stella Awards that he has been tired all year.
Sure, some of it has to do with guiding his fast growing school sports and apparel manufacturer through several major transactions the past couple years and winning a precedent-setting case at the U.S. Supreme Court – the achievements the GC Forum points to in awarding Brillhart its award for GC of the Year for a Small Legal Department.
But the real reason for his exhaustion, Brillhart explained, is that he and his wife of two decades have a brand new baby at home.
Minutes later, Keurig Dr Pepper General Counsel Jim Baldwin took the stage to accept the same award but for a Large Legal Department.
“I have no such big announcement,” said Baldwin, to a round of laughs.
The GC Forum honored Brillhart, Baldwin and seven other prominent corporate in-house counsel and Toyota Motor’s legal department. The organization of 650 top legal officers at Texas-based businesses created the Magna Stella Award in 2006 to recognize excellence and success among corporate in-house lawyers.
The Texas Lawbook was the only news media outlet to attend the event. The Lawbook published exclusive in-depth profiles of three of the Magna Stella Award winners last week and will feature articles on the other honorees during the next two weeks.
For example, The Texas Lawbook published on Tuesday an in-depth profile of Baldwin and his legal department’s $18.7 billion merger between Plano-based Dr Pepper Snapple and Keurig Green Mountain earlier this year.
The most dramatic moment of the evening came when the GC Forum awarded its Lifetime Achievement Award to recently retired ConocoPhillips General Counsel Janet Carrig, who received a standing ovation.
Carrig said that one of the benefits of being retired is that she recently was able to be out of state with her family for the birth of her grandchild. She said she asked her son and daughter what she should say in accepting the award and her son said that she definitely needed to point out that she is proof that women “can have it all.” She said her daughter spoke up and said, “Well, we can have it all some of the time – not all of the time.”
Some of the time, job duties took priority over family and “bed time stories were missed,” Carrig said. Sometimes family responsibilities had to be placed above work. “And sometimes there was so much going on that I got D-grades all the way around,” she said.
The Thursday evening ceremony, which was held for the first time at the Fairmont Hotel in Austin, opened by honoring Energy Transfer Partners Deputy General Counsel Tonja De Sloover with its Magna Stella Award for Major Litigation.
The Magna Stella Award for General Counsel of a Non-Profit/Governmental Agency went to Kerstin Arnold, the GC of the Texas State Board of Pharmacy. A University of Texas Law graduate, Arnold has been a lawyer for the Pharmacy Board for nearly two decades and oversees legal staff of 17 lawyers and legal assistants. She is a central figure fighting the opioid crisis in Texas.
The GC Forum gave the Magna Stella for a Solo General Counsel to Hanger GC Thomas Hartman. The former Foley Gardere partner guided the Austin-based medical products company through a major internal investigation that resulted in four years of financial restatements to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The Texas Lawbook is scheduled to publish on Nov. 26 an in-depth article detailing Hartman’s extraordinary challenge and successes during the past five years.
The Magna Stella Award for Senior Managing Counsel at a Large Legal Department went to Andrew Gratz, an associate general counsel at Houston-based LyondellBasell Industries. Gratz oversees the $40 billion publicly traded company’s transactional matters, including its $2.25 billion acquisition of A. Schulman Inc. earlier this year.
McLane Grocery General Counsel Eric Hildenbrand received the Magna Stella for Senior Managing Counsel for a Small Legal Department. Hildenbrand provides strategic litigation advice and oversees corporate compliance matters for the $30 billion company, which is based in Temple, Texas.
The winner of the Magna Stella Award for a Major Transaction went to Victoria Lazar, who is Executive Counsel for Mergers and Acquisitions at General Electric. Based in Houston, Lazar has led several multi-billion-dollar transactions for GE, including the combination of GE Oil & Gas and Baker Hughes, which created an oilfield services company with $23 billion in annual revenue.
Finally, the GC Forum awarded Corporate Legal Department Diversity Award to Plano-based Toyota Motor. Toyota GC Sandra Phillips Rogers accepted the award and said that diversity continues to be a challenge in the legal profession, but it is a goal that can be accomplished.