As we reported on the day of the event, the 2025 Bench Bar Conference for the Northern District of Texas, held April 11, began with a bit of a bang.
U.S. District Judge David Godbey caused an early stir by describing the level of personal threats against himself and against other judges and their families as a threat to judicial independence.
But in that same conversation NDTX District Clerk Karen Mitchell, the federal judiciary’s longest serving clerk, made it clear that the threats are more common than publicly acknowledged, are not limited to judges and are coming in a multitude of forms.
“They [the threats] have been non-stop. They come through the phone, they come through email, just egregious things. Even some of our staff can receive threats at home,” Mitchell said.
Moreover, threats are not limited to physical security — and are exacerbated by the court’s limited budget resources.
“Cyber-attacks are also nonstop. We are being hit, just in our district, every single day,” Mitchell said. “I get a report every night, late at night, of all different attempted attacks on our system. [Hackers] try and try to bring it down, trying to get in and get some records, those kinds of things. And it’s very costly to try to combat that, because people who are doing that are doing it 24/7. That’s their goal, is to bring down the judiciary, and our ability to defend against us is very limited — and limited based on our resources.”
Threats against the system have become so common, she said, that the Office of the Administrator of U.S. Courts recently set up a task force to investigate the role of such threat against judicial independence. Moreover, the threat to sensitive data filed with the court is so profound that she offered the lawyers in attendance some starkly worded advice.
“I just want to warn you, as you represent your clients, whether you’re a civil lawyer or a criminal lawyer, if you can keep sensitive records out in the courts filing system, I strongly encourage you to do that. File something redacted, if you can get the judge’s permission, do whatever you can keep those things [confidential] because we no longer have control locally over what happens to those records.”
Threats against the judicial system was neither the theme of the conference or the only takeaway. A wide range of topics were presented — layered with anecdote, legal insight, humor and more than occasional advice.
Here are a few outtakes from the day:
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Senior Judge Barbara Lynn, who has announced her intent to retire from the bench in August, offered her own outtakes from 25 years on the bench, a career that has included, by her reckoning 13,000 cases, nearly 200 trials and 50-plus weddings.
She recalled one bank robber — small in stature who had carried a tiny gun in the palm of his hand during the incident. He didn’t use it, but its presence gave him exposure to higher sentencing.
“The public defender did not have a lot to work with in this case, so he decided to emphasize — for some reason that seemed a mystery to me — the way the defendant was dressed during the robbery.”
“He was wearing blue jeans and a T-shirt with a picture of a squirrel, and the tee-shirt said: ‘Don’t mess with my nuts.’ “
Lynn also recounted one of her favorite stories about the fundamental need for resilience in the judicial system. She recalled being in the midst of a tax-evasion trial set on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001.
She asked the pro se defendant and the prosecutors if they wished to continue. Both said they wanted to proceed.
“I said I would proceed if the jury agreed. I called the jurors in. I told them what had happened, and I assured them that we would adjourn immediately if we had received any threats to the courts.”
“They retired to discuss it,” Lynn continued, “Then they returned to tell me that they decided the best way to respond to an act of terrorism perpetrated that day was to show support for our country, our democracy and the rule of law — and that they wanted to go ahead.”
“I have told that story during virtually every voir dire for twenty-three-and-a-half years; and hardly anyone tries to get out of jury duty after they learn how those jurors regarded their experience.”
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A breakout session on federal enforcement priorities under the new administration drew an SRO crowd.
In similar venues across the country, federal officials have declined to appear. But not so for David Fraser, associate director of the Fort Worth regional office of the Securities and Exchange Commission, or Craig Wolf, Special Agent in Charge of the Dallas field office of the Secret Service. Both showed up and— after reading disclaimers about not speaking for their agencies — spoke on their personal views on the priorities and pressing issues at their respective agencies.
The new SEC focus, as Fraser described it, would be much the same as that of the previous administration: investor fraud, disclosure fraud, retail fraud, fraud of the elderly, insider trading. Where the new administration might depart those previous, Fraser said, is an emphasis on individual liability.
“I think it’s something that the SEC would always strive to do, is hold individuals responsible for their misconduct, particularly with respect to corporate wrongdoing. But I think it’s going to get a renewed focus with this current commission,” Fraser said.
There are also, however, a few new priorities Fraser mentioned, particularly fraud using emerging technologies: fraud using AI, fraud through social media, the dark web or counterfeit websites; hacking to obtain data or information for insider trading; fraudulent takeovers of retail brokerage accounts; fraud involving blockchain technology and crypto assets; compliance issues involving cybersecurity with broker dealers and investment advisors, and fraudulent disclosure by public companies related to cybersecurity issues.
Craig Wolf of the Secret Service echoed many of the same issues, particularly involving cybersecurity, national security and internationally organized crime.
“I think we’re in a space now where, even in the past five years, you’ve seen a gap closure with the speed of technology,” Craig said. “So, we have nation states, or proxies of nation states, for example, that are effectively weaponizing AI technology, machine learning; and the anonymity of the dark web, in particular, gives them the space to operate in the criminal world.”
Wolf said the Secret Service had invested heavily in technology to combat some of those problems, and to that end has developed a high degree of cooperation with the Defense Department on those issues.
“We’re obviously working with our partners, whether it be within U.S. government or with contractors and private sector vendors where technology is evolving. So, I think you’ve just seen an uptick in investment as we learn about blockchain and Bitcoin and crypto tracing.”
“That (crypto), of course, presents tremendous problems for a lot of you (lawyers) in the room as it relates to asset forfeiture and seizure and perhaps dealing with countries that are not honoring MLATs (mutual legal assistance treaties),” Craig surmised.
“So, we’re evolving into that space to drill down harder on, you know, finding out who the individuals are, and then also trying to figure out better ways to leverage technology to trace a lot of the assets.”
For the North Texas DOJ perspective, the Bench Bar leaned on former NDTX AUSA Scott Hogan who in early April joined Dykema Gossett in Dallas after nearly 20 years in public service.
Hogan, in turn, leaned on Attorney General Pam Bondi’s recent iteration of priorities: transactional criminal organizations with a focus on drug cartels, their leaders, human trafficking, smuggling of all sorts — and a pause “interestingly” a pause on investigations under the Federal Corrupt Practices Act, except for those focused on individuals.
“Obviously, the Northern District will follow those,” Hogan said.
“But I think also, just my observation, Texas continues to be a hotbed for health care fraud, on the criminal and the civil side, we see a lot of overlap now on both sides. I think the office has invested a lot of resources over the years in in those prosecutors, so I think we’ll continue to see a lot of emphasis there.”
Elsewhere on the civil side, Hogan said he was seeing an uptick in duty evasion cases, and alongside the tariffs recently impose, he said, an even greater uptick can be expected.
“That’s going to be a real hotbed.”
And then there’s defense contracting, an important focus in North Texas.
“In the Northern District we have a huge defense industry and defense contractors. And over the last, I would say 10 to 12 years, we saw a real decline on the civil side of the house in procurement type cases… I think we’re starting to see a trend back towards a lot of attention on that: folks realizing the amount of monies that are going into defense contracting. It’s not just defense, it’s throughout the government. So, I think procurement fraud is going to continue to be something that we see a lot of focus on over the next couple of years.”
On the defense side of things, Jeff Ansley of Vedder Price said the change in administrations had brought uncertainty to many of his cases. He said some cases have already been scrapped by the SEC or DOJ.
“As a result, we’re not quite sure where, for instance, the SEC is going,” said Ansley. “We’ve got some cases that are active cases, that they’re filed, and obviously they’re going forward, in most cases, with active investigations that are deep into the process.”
“Others, we don’t know. We’re not told one way or the other. But every indication is that some of those are dying in the vine as well. And I think that’s part of, at least in part, the loss of some resources, said Ansley. “And I think also just kind of the staff, the SEC probably DOJ, too, trying to redefine what their priorities are going to be.”
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U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor of the Fort Worth division led off a session on the growing influence of textualism across all levels of jurisprudence.
“All nine Justices of the Supreme Court say that the text controls. We have to look to the text. The Fifth Circuit has said text is never divorced from the context. And so, I think it is important, and we probably all subscribe to it.”
On the importance of context to textualism:
“We’ve got to read the statute in its full context, so presume that you’ve got to read it in a way where ALL of the words have some meaning, and not read it in a way where your particular reading nullifies some of the terms of the statute.”
Adding the tip:
“The general idea is that words are known by the words that are associated with them. So, you look to the words that are surrounding the disputed terms. It’s important not to just focus on the disputed terms.”
U.S. District Judge Ada Brown reviewed the growing use of corpus linguistics to resolve issues of evolving textualist meaning at various points in time, endorsing the use of corpus linguistics to resolve meanings that can’t be resolved by the more prosaic use of dictionaries.
“Corpus linguistics, broken down very simply, is the study of language to large, structured databases that will look for real world text to analyze at a specific point in time what we are looking at as far as public ordinary meaning, ordinary language.”
She cited its use in a 2019 U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals case Wilson v. Safelite Group, Inc. involving a series of words in the ERISA statute. In a concurrence with the majority, Judge Amul Thapar noted his use of the Corpus of Historical American English, a one-billion-word database of American English words, to derive the most common meanings of phrases in the statute.
Judge Brown added a tip:
“There are also the good old dictionaries, which may or may not provide something about what the ordinary user of English language thought the word meant at the time.”
U.S. District Judge Brantley Starr also endorsed the use of dictionaries and corpus linguistics, adding the element of originalism to the textualism discussion. He asked for a show of hands from the packed audience of those who had studied originalism in law school. Joking that the only hands raised were those of his own clerks, he wondered aloud why originalism is not discussed more broadly in law schools.
“If we have perhaps a supermajority on the Supreme Court who’s thinking in that mindset first and a (U.S.) Fifth Circuit that’s sort of grading our papers, why don’t we teach that in law school?” Starr said.
The framework of original public meaning, said Starr, is broader than the meaning of words and phrases as they were understood by the Founders of the Constitution.
“Original public meaning is very simple: when those words were adopted — whether it be by the Founders or the people who came up with a contract 20 years ago that’s in front of you,” Starr mused.
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Several sessions dwelled, as well, on the immediately practical. In a session trial strategies, corporate defense attorney Veronica Moyé of King & Spalding emphasized the importance of the opening statement — especially for the defense.
“I am one of those who believes that the opening statement is absolutely critical,” said Moyé. “In the cases that I’ve tried, 99 percent of the time we’ve done a number of mock trials. And what you’ll see in those mock trials is that those jurors believe everything that that plaintiff has said, and they are heavily plaintiff oriented after that. If you do not bring them back to your side in that opening, you have no chance of keeping them through the end of the trial,” Moyé explained.
She recommended focusing on no more than three high-level themes, backed by crisp presentation and the use of engaging visual aids are, Moyé said, “absolutely critical.”
“Because again, you’re not going to get those themes back If you don’t get them in the opening. They (the jury) are not going to fight for you.”
She also focused on her differing approach to direct and cross-examination, changing the focus from witness to lawyer.
“In my mind, I think in direct examinations of my witness as the star. I am very much in the background. People are focused on that witness. They know something about me or her,” said Moyé.
“On cross-examination, I am the star. It does not matter what this person’s answers are. I like to ask questions where it doesn’t matter whether they agree or disagree, because either answer looks terrible for them.”
On direct, she said, the danger is appearing too rehearsed. On cross the stakes are different.
“Cross is so much harder, because you have to be disciplined. And there’s this tendency to want to argue with the witness and to win your case on cross examination. I do not believe you will win your case on cross examination. The most you will do is damage this witness, point out some key facts that are weakening the case and maybe damage the credibility. But trying to score points from your side on cross? I don’t think it works,” Moyé said.
Jenna Rudoff, senior assistant general counsel for global litigation at Nike, said potential appellate issues become, for her, a priority the moment a legal issue is presented.
“For me, it’s actually step one from the moment a question or issue is brought to me. Maybe by another legal team. Maybe it’s pre litigation, pre investigation,” Rudoff said.
“The moment the fact or issue is presented to me, that’s when I start thinking: What are my elements? What’s my charge going to look like? And coming from being a federal prosecutor, same thing there. As soon as issues are presented to me, I’m looking at my charge. What do I have to prove? How do I do this at trial? What does that look like at trial?”