Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury
Sara Garcia Duran never considered becoming a lawyer until she was asked to make a decision while on a student trip in high school. She thought about being a politician, but that option didn’t sound terribly appealing. “I’ll go join the lawyers,” Duran said.
The M&A-focused partner at Sidley is pleased with her choice. Duran recently gave The Texas Lawbook an in-depth look into her journey and her experience as a woman working as a Texas dealmaker.
The spring, summer and fall of 2020 was a time of turbulence and uncertainty. The Covid-19 shutdowns meant law firm offices were closed, courts put all trials on hold and clients were struggling to survive. The media was filled with stories on the killings of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery. There was a feeling of isolation. But it was later that year that Vinson & Elkins promoted Quentin Smith to partner.
Smith has scored a handful of multimillion-dollar trial victories for clients and is currently one of the lead lawyers representing Oncor Electric Delivery and other transmission and distribution utilities in the Winter Storm Uri litigation in which 15,000 plaintiffs seek several billions of dollars in damages in wrongful death, personal injury and property damage cases. Despite his busy schedule, Smith agreed to discuss Black History Month and diversity efforts with The Texas Lawbook.
The phrase “Drill, Baby, Drill,” may be short code for the new administration’s energy policy, but according to a recent analysis by S&P Global, don’t expect the slogan to characterize the short-term CapX plans for major O&G producers. Stalled by stubborn market prices, fossil fuel production by the world’s largest energy producer has plateaued for the moment, a situation that is likely to characterize all of 2025. The CDT Roundup takes a look at the numbers for the U.S. and Texas, as well as the usual summary of Texas-driven transactions reported last week.
Judge Christine Weems of the 281st Civil District Court in Harris County is ruling on cases by day and acting and directing by night. Weems’ new show, The Five Minute Mile, put on by a 13-person ensemble cast, is slated to open Feb. 15.
Daniel Hernandez Alvarenga’s mother noticed a change in her 17-year-old son when she picked him up from the Dallas airport following a two-week stay at a rural camp nearly 2,000 miles away in Maine. Indeed, Hernandez had changed. The Dallas high school student gained energy, ideas and hope, he said in a testimonial video published by IRISI, a non-profit organization founded by Kirkland & Ellis Dallas partner Michael Considine and his wife, Megan Considine, that raises scholarships to send teenagers to camp. Irisi, which since 2023 has sent about a dozen North Texas students to the Seeds of Peace Camp in Otisfield, Maine, officially launched this year.
Throughout the world of corporate law, there have been attacks on diversity and inclusion, as the biggest companies and law firms in America have bowed to pressure to back off their public commitment to DEI. At the same time, some political leaders and media commentators openly shame lawyers for tackling unpopular defendants or policies. The Texas Lawbook is actually doubling down on our commitment to pro bono, public service and diversity in the legal profession. Today, we officially announce the hiring of Krista Torralva as a new pro bono and diversity beat reporter for The Texas Lawbook. Krista is a former Dallas Morning News courts reporter who has covered litigation for The Lawbook for more than a year.
The ground had not yet thawed four years ago when the Texas courts were slammed with an avalanche of lawsuits. More than 30,000 individuals and small businesses filed wrongful death, personal injury and property damage lawsuits against ERCOT and the energy companies accusing them of gross negligence that caused much of the power blackouts. A separate class action accused energy companies and financial institutions of using Winter Storm Uri to manipulate prices and generate billions of dollars in profits. Four years later, not a single witness deposition has been taken and not a single case has been set for trial. And a growing number of legal experts predict that none of those cases will ever be heard by a jury of Texas citizens.
Crowded court dockets mean the interest in, and need for, alternative dispute resolution (ADR) continues to grow throughout Texas. How can you set the stage for successful mediation? When is the right time to mediate a case? What should you do before you arrive at the mediation? And why is having a settlement range important?
The Houston office of Latham & Watkins had not been open for a year when Ryan Maierson experienced a significant realization. The office opened in February 2010, and as the year progressed, he and the other partners at Baker Botts began to marvel at how easily this “non-native” firm from Los Angeles integrated itself into Texas’s established transactional law environment.
Other national firms had previously entered the Texas market. However, with Latham — the second most profitable law firm in the world — something felt different. In less than a year, Latham had achieved what no other national firm had managed to do: it instilled a sense of fear in the long-established Texas firms that had previously dominated corporate law in the Lone Star State.
Fifteen years later, this is the story of how Latham changed the game in Texas.
When veteran Houston M&A lawyer Stephen Gill moved to Skadden last month, it was a seismic move on a national scale in terms of hiring skilled dealmaking talent. In this exclusive Q&A with The Texas Lawbook, Gill took some time to talk about trends, why the time was right to make the move to Skadden and more.
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