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P.S. — ‘Our Bar Card Is Not Merely a Ticket to a Better Bank Account,’ Retired Fifth District Court of Appeals Justice Kenneth Molberg Says Accepting Dallas Bar Foundation Award

In this edition of P.S., retired Fifth District Court of Appeals Justice Kenneth Molberg urged lawyers to defend the rule of law and ensure their efforts extend beyond the privileged to those most in need, while accepting the Dallas Bar Foundation’s 2026 Fellows Justinian Award. 

“Our bar card is not merely a ticket to a better bank account,” Molberg said to a room of about 350 attendees. 

In Austin, Jackson Walker is hosting the 5th Annual Hispanic National Bar Association Region XII Summit at the firm’s office there. 

In Houston, the nonprofit outreach program Girls Inc. of Greater Houston honored Pye Legal Group President Stacy Humphries with its Melanie Gray Vanguard Award for her “unwavering commitment to community leadership and philanthropy” at its 2026 Strong, Smart & Bold Luncheon last week. 

And back in Dallas, the much-anticipated opening of South Dallas’ Halperin Park is set for May 9 with lawyers from Greenberg Traurig, T-Mobile and Cienda Partners among those leading the transformative project.

Also, TODAY is the deadline to nominate an appellate lawyer or judge for the Texas Center for Legal Ethics 18th annual Chief Justice Jack Pope Professionalism Award. The award will be presented at the Texas Supreme Court Historical Society Dinner in September. Find details for how to nominate in this column.

‘The Golden Age for Corporate Law in Texas is Now’ (Updated)

Never in history have Texas corporate lawyers worked so many hours, charged such enormous rates and raked in more revenue and profits than they are right now. The Texas offices of more than three dozen law firms scored record-high revenues in 2025 — and many of them surpassed their old records by tens of millions of dollars, according to new Texas Lawbook 50 data.

Citing increased demand for legal services and healthy hourly rate increases, 48 of the Lawbook 50 law firms generated more revenue and more profits in their Texas operations in 2025 than they did in 2024.

DOJ’s Plans to Revoke Naturalizations Could Undo Hundreds of Convictions

The DOJ’s accelerated plans to revoke the citizenship of hundreds of naturalized citizens who “committed fraud” in the naturalization process will rely, in part, on a provision allowing revocation when the citizen is convicted after naturalization of a crime that started or occurred before naturalization. Ironically, such a move could provide the legal predicate to invalidate the very convictions the government will use to seek denaturalization. Citizens who pled guilty to pre-naturalization crimes likely had no idea that doing so could lead to denaturalization. Unless they were warned of this risk — and in our experience they were not — their guilty pleas may now be subject to challenge as uninformed and involuntary, even after the fact.

Tariffs and Trade: Dallas Leaders Examine a Changing Landscape

As policymakers continue to recalibrate U.S. trade policy in the wake of “Liberation Day,” the real-world effects are still rippling across boardrooms, factory floors, and checkout counters. At a recent economic roundtable hosted by The Texas Lawbook, four international trade experts offered a look at how tariffs and the uncertainty surrounding them are reshaping decision-making for Texas businesses and consumers alike.

Here are highlights from the conversation.

Baker Botts Advises ARC Resources in Shell Deal

British oil and gas giant Shell announced Monday an agreement to acquire ARC Resources, a Canadian energy company focused on the Montney shale basin in British Columbia and Alberta, in a deal with a total enterprise value of about $16.4 billion.   

Baker Botts is acting as U.S. regulatory counsel to Calgary-based ARC Resources. Travis Torrence is head of legal for Shell USA.

Litigation Roundup: Verizon Beats Back $175M Infringement Verdict

In this edition of Litigation Roundup, a lawsuit Mercuria Energy American filed against a former trader won’t be going to trial after all, and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission gets a $7 million final judgment in a case against a forex trader from Houston it alleged was operating a Ponzi scheme.

Immigration Habeas Filings Jump 250% in North Texas After Policy Shift, Judge Says

Facing a “tsunami of litigation” driven by the Trump administration’s expansive classification of noncitizens as “applicants for admission” — making them ineligible for bond — lawyers and judges in the Northern District of Texas have “answered the call,” with attorneys stepping forward to represent immigrants on a pro bono basis and with judges working around the clock to issue timely, thoughtful orders, U.S. District Judge James Wesley Hendrix said Friday during closing remarks at the district’s annual Bench Bar Conference, held this year in Arlington.

Aimee Fagan’s IP Practice Is a ‘Natural Fit’ at Winston & Strawn  

Brett Johnson, co-managing partner of Winston & Strawn’s Dallas office, was approached in February by a corporate client and the opposing counsel in a litigation matter with the same message.

“You have got to talk to Aimee Fagan,” the client told Johnson. “She’s your kind of lawyer — excellent courtroom skills and an even better person.” 

That same weekend, three friends — none of them related to each other — contacted Fagan, a prominent Dallas intellectual property lawyer at Sidley Austin, to encourage her to talk to leaders at Winston because they thought the Chicago-founded firm “was a natural fit for my practice.”

On April 24, Fagan joined the Dallas office of Winston.

CDT Roundup: Fiber, Towers and Rare Earths Fuel Diverse Deal Slate

For the week ended April 25, the Roundup reported on 11 deals worth about $19.7 billion, or maybe $69.7 billion, depending on how SpaceX’s latest acquisition pans out.

Aside from the SpaceX rent-to-own deal this week’s slate of transactions includes the acquisition of a Brazilian Rare Earth source with a 15-year offtake agreement with the U.S.-backed buyer already in place; a $1.5 billion investment in a REIT that specializes in communications towers; the reverse-merger of an offshore oil services firm with a Houston-based competitor; the acquisition of a fiber provider in Alaska; the sale of a compression services provider to a Lubbock firm and the sale of a minority stake in a hyperscale data center developer.

That and more in this edition of CDT Roundup.

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