Jim Coleman leaned forward over the window-front table at the City Club on the 69th floor of the Bank of America Plaza in downtown Dallas.
The legal market faced monumental challenges in 2015. National corporate firms were invading Texas and stealing high-profile talent by offering multimillion-dollar guarantees. A handful of lawyers had boosted their billing rates to $1,000 an hour. Meanwhile, pro bono work had declined. Incivility in the legal profession skyrocketed, as the number of lawyers suing other lawyers dramatically increased.
Coleman, a role model and mentor for scores and scores of Texas attorneys, openly worried that law was quickly becoming just like every other business and was no longer a noble profession.
“The law, as a profession, rises and falls on leadership,” he told The Texas Lawbook in 2015.
Never have those words been more important than today.
The Association of Corporate Counsel’s DFW Chapter and The Lawbook are pleased to announce the launch of the Texas Lawbook Leadership Symposium, which will focus on issues facing legal industry leaders, provide insight into leadership decision-making and honor corporate general counsel and law firm executives and managing partners who have demonstrated great leadership during an era of disruption.
The Lawbook Leadership Symposium will feature a series of in-person events, webcasts and articles published in The Lawbook annually.
For example, the Lawbook Leadership Symposium will officially launch next week with a three-part series of articles on leadership by Jacobs General Counsel Chasity Henry.
Then, on April 13, The Dallas Morning News will host the inaugural Lawbook Leadership Symposium event — a three-hour program that features prominent leaders in the Texas legal community discussing major issues facing leaders today. The Lawbook will also honor a handful of corporate in-house counsel and law firm executives at the event.
“The Texas legal community faces extraordinary challenges — from increased competition and the growth of artificial intelligence to political attacks that threaten independence and effectiveness of the legal profession and the judiciary,” said Derek Lipscombe, co-chair of the Texas Lawbook Foundation and managing counsel at Toyota Motors North America.
“The importance of leadership today cannot be understated,” Lipscombe said.
Future Lawbook Leadership Symposium programs will include tackling unpopular pro bono cases, lawyers as business community leaders, managing high-profile colleagues and high-profile clients, leading a law firm and corporate legal department through times of crisis and achieving greater diversity and inclusion within the mission of better business and legal results.
“One of the most frequent topics The Lawbook is asked to address, either through articles or CLE programs, is identifying and developing effective leadership,” said Texas Lawbook publisher Brooks Igo. “Through the Lawbook Leadership Symposium, we seek to address the nuts-and-bolts of true leadership. Part of that is celebrating those in the legal profession who are demonstrating effective leadership every day.”
All funds raised by the Lawbook Leadership Symposium will go to the Texas Lawbook Foundation, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) that has a sole purpose of reporting on and writing articles about pro bono, public service and diversity in the legal profession in Texas.
For more information about the Texas Lawbook Leadership Symposium, please contact Brooks Igo at brooks.igo@texaslawbook.net.