Houston Corporate Counsel Awards Recap

The 2026 Houston Corporate Counsel Awards last week featured the general counsel and senior in-house counsel for some of the largest companies in Texas and the world.

Stories were told. Bourbon, beer and wine were sipped. Shrimp, crab cakes, beef sliders and ice cream sundaes were devoured. Laughs and smiles abounded.

Most importantly, challenges and successes were shared and honored.

Showing that the energy and chemical industries are still king in Houston, top lawyers were celebrated from ConocoPhillips, Cactus, Castleton Commodities, Deep Blue, Energy Transfer, Energy and Minerals Group, Enerflex, ExxonMobil, KBR, LyondellBasell, Phillips 66, Plains All American, Shell and Siemens Energy.

Not to be outdone, legal department leaders from educational and healthcare institutions such as Rice University, Houston Methodist and the Lactation Network were recognized for their extraordinary achievements.

In all, 278 corporate GCs, managing counsel and their outside lawyers joined the Association of Corporate Counsel’s Houston Chapter and The Texas Lawbook in celebrating their legal and business accomplishments from an 18-month period that was chock-full of turmoil and stress.

“What an extraordinary event this is every year,” said Travis Torrence, who is U.S. head of legal for global energy giant Shell. “The Texas Lawbook and ACC Houston make this one of the must-attend events for the legal industry in Texas. So many great lawyers being honored for doing such great work.”

The May 28 awards ceremony took on an extra energy because two of the award recipients — Fertitta Entertainment General Counsel Steven Scheinthal and ExxonMobil Senior Counsel David Kern — were in the news that very day for two huge successes for their clients. ExxonMobil shareholders only hours before the event had approved the energy corporation’s retail shareholder voting initiative making it easier for individual stockholders to vote on company matters. And Fertitta Entertainment announced that very morning that it was acquiring Caesars casinos and hotels for $18 billion.

“Steve has had an incredibly successful and busy day, year and career,” said John Zavitsanos, a partner at Ahmad, Zavitsanos & Mensing, who nominated Scheinthal for the GC of the Year award.

Award recipients took to the stage to make their acceptance remarks to music that included Creedance Clearwater Revival, Creed and Survivor (“Eye of the Tiger” for LyondellBasell GC Jeff Kaplan).

The Lawbook is pleased to present these photographs from the 2026 Houston Corporate Counsel Awards. Profiles of the honorees can be found here.