The Association of Corporate Counsel’s Dallas/Fort Worth Chapter and The Texas Lawbook are officially accepting nominations for the 2019 Outstanding Corporate Counsel Awards.
This is the third year that ACC-DFW and The Lawbook have partnered for the annual awards event, which recognizes the best of the best legal work being performed by corporate in-house counsel.
But the DFW Outstanding Corporate Counsel Awards are unique in that they also recognize great working relationships and successes between in-house counsel and their outside law firms.
“Together, the Association of Corporate Counsel and The Texas Lawbook have made the annual awards the premier awards event in the Dallas/Fort Worth area,” says ACC-DFW President Derek Lipscombe, a managing counsel at Toyota.
“The DFW Corporate Counsel Awards truly showcase the amazing legal work and great successes of in-house lawyers,” Lipscombe says. “I think that there’s a perception that in-house counsel are not actively practicing law and these awards show that is untrue, that some of the best lawyers in Texas are in corporate legal departments.
“But there are several awards that recognize great partnerships between in-house counsel and the law firms that represent them,” he says. “We recognize that some of the greatest achievements are due to great work by in-house counsel and outside counsel.”
This year, there are 14 award categories, which are listed below. Nominations will be accepted now through Nov. 6.
The Lawbook and ACC-DFW leaders will appoint panels of judges to review and evaluate each nomination, and then select up to three finalists. There may be some categories that have only one or two finalists. The Lawbook plans to interview each finalist and publish feature articles about each one.
The 2019 Outstanding Corporate Counsel Awards finalists will be honored and the winners announced Jan. 30 at a ceremony at the George Bush Institute. Last year, 350 corporate general counsel and other businesses lawyers attended the event.
The categories are:
Lifetime Achievement Award recognizes a current or retired General Counsel or Assistant GC for her or his decades-long commitment to the legal profession and the corporate in-house counsel community.
M&A Deal of the Year honors a corporate legal department and its outside counsel for successfully guiding a company through a complex merger, acquisition, project or joint venture.
Senior In-House Counsel of the Year, (Large, Medium & Small/Solo Departments) recognizes individual in-house senior counsel (not GCs or CLOs) for successes they achieved through their individual efforts and engagements.
Public Service & Pro Bono celebrates an individual corporate in-house counsel for her or his commitment and service to the community, pro bono and public service.
Legal Innovation honors an individual corporate counsel for game-changing, creative approaches to legal services.
Creative Partnership praises corporate legal departments and one of their outside law firms for original and unique ways they work together in the delivery of complex and strategic legal services.
Business Litigation of the Year honors a corporate legal department and its outside counsel for extraordinary success in a complex and high stakes litigation or trial.
Rookie of the Year celebrates a young lawyer (35 years or younger) who has been in-house for five years or less and has already achieved extraordinary successes.
Corporate Legal Department Diversity recognizes an individual corporate in-house counsel for her or his commitment and service to diversity initiatives.
General Counsel of the Year (Large, Medium & Small/Solo Departments) honors individual General Counsel and Chief Legal Officers in their respective categories for successes they achieved through their individual efforts.
The rules for nomination are simple: The corporate counsel being nominated must reside and work in the DFW area and the work for which they are being honored must have occurred, at least in part, during the past year.
Anyone can make a nomination, including outside counsel, in-house colleagues, service providers or even non-lawyer officials within the business.
Nomination tip: The more information you provide in your submission about the lawyers and legal departments being nominated and the successes they’ve achieved, the more likely it is that they will be selected as finalists.