This is the story of three lawyers at Keurig Dr Pepper — Jim Baldwin, Anthony Shoemaker and Stephen Cole — who took a huge risk in leading a normally conservative, litigation-adverse company in suing a business partner, the business partner’s profanity-spewing founder and Dr Pepper’s biggest and universally feared competitor, Coca-Cola. Along with outside counsel at Gibson Dunn, they took a highly complex dispute and boiled it down to one sentence in a contract. By the end, they had opposing counsel pleading with the judge to push for a settlement weeks before trial. The result: a $925 million victory and a finalist for the 2022 DFW Outstanding Corporate Counsel Award for Business Litigation of the Year.
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WFH to LAW: Gray Reed’s Renovated Houston Office Aims to Feel Like Home
Coming off a record year in 2021 in which it generated $112.5 million in revenues, the 150-lawyer firm partnered with the architectural and design firm Abel Design Group for a yearlong project to create a “next generation space” at Four Oaks Place in the Galleria, where the firm has been headquartered since 1998. The 61,600 square foot modernized space features more inviting gathering spaces, including a wine lounge and fireplace, and improved technological capabilities.
Gray Reed Chief Operating Officer Mark Gargiulo said the revamped office even coined a new phrase. “Over the last couple of years, everyone has most certainly become familiar with WFH or Work From Home. However, our space has generated questions about how one might Live At Work, ironically abbreviated LAW.”
PepsiCo Foods’ Adrienne Mosley: ‘Out of our poverty came a great, life-changing blessing’
Adrienne Brown Mosley’s mother did not have money for a present for her 18th birthday. Instead, she convinced a lawyer in Vicksburg, Mississippi, to allow young Adrienne to follow her for the day. “This shadowing day changed the entire trajectory of my life,” Mosley said.
Mosley is now the deputy GC of PepsiCo Foods North America, where she has developed initiatives to build a culture of compliance in a more stringent antitrust regulatory environment, helped enact innovative product partnerships to address supply chain challenges and worked to reinvigorate the corporate giant’s diversity and inclusion efforts through innovative mentoring programs.
The Association of Corporate Counsel’s DFW Chapter and The Texas Lawbook have named Mosley the recipient of the 2022 DFW Corporate Counsel Award for Senior Counsel of the Year for a Midsized Legal Department.
Premium Content Q&A: Adrienne Brown Mosley
Adrienne Mosley shares what makes her tick and offers advice for law firm managing partners about diversity.
SCOTX Ponders Impact of UT Attorney-Client Privilege Case on Public Information Requests
A nonprofit news organization seeks documents uncovered during a consulting firm’s investigation into allegations of favoritism in admissions to the University of Texas. Although the report was made public, UT says the underlying documents fall under attorney-client privilege.
Pivotal Year on the Horizon for Texas Cryptocurrency Miners
As the so-called crypto winter chases weaker and less committed participants from the market, the remaining players will likely see a vastly changed landscape once the snow melts. From the dot-com bust of the early century to the fallout of the global financial crisis of 2007-2009, market trauma has ultimately led to a heightened regulatory response, and one would expect the effort to regulate the cryptocurrency industry—something that was well underway even prior to 2022—will gain significant momentum in the coming year, not just in terms of crypto’s intersection with securities law but also its relevance to the ongoing energy transition.
CDT Roundup: 18 Deals, 11 Firms, 167 Lawyers, $8.3B
M&A in 2022 was down by a lot, especially in deal value. Post-pandemic 2021 was a record year, so some decline was more than possible. But according to Refinitiv, the 37 percent global decline in deal values from 2021 was, in fact, the worst year-over-year drop in value since 2001. This week’s CDT Roundup observes a few other ways in which 2022 stood out, as well as the names of 167 lawyers who helped forge the first deals of 2023.
Law Firm Lobby Shops Offer Clients One-Stop Shopping
With fewer large Texas law firms retaining lobby practice groups, those that remain are busier than ever as the 2023 legislative session promises key decisions on tax and regulatory issues for a wide range of corporate clients. The Texas Lawbook talks with three veteran lobbyists working to pass, change and kill legislation.
ERCOT to Texas Supremes: ‘Quite Literally, Chaos Will Follow’
If the Texas Legislature wanted the Electric Reliability Council of Texas to be immune from civil lawsuits, it would have passed laws stating so, lawyers representing two large energy companies told the Texas Supreme Court during oral arguments Monday. The justices clearly understood the full stakes of the decision before them.
“Are you arguing that ERCOT is too big to fail?” Justice Boyd asked.
“In essence, yes,” former Texas Chief Justice Wallace Jefferson, representing ERCOT, answered.
Litigation Roundup: Dallas Owes Developer $850K, Exxon Challenges ‘Windfall Tax’
In the first edition of Litigation Roundup in 2023, the City of Dallas has to pay up in a real estate dispute, Exxon Mobil sets its sights on undoing a “windfall tax” the European Union has imposed on energy companies and the Fifth Circuit revives an excessive force case against a cop who punched a man at Hobby Airport.