Main Content
Top Stories
Top Stories
Top 10 White-Collar Crime Cases of 2025 - Healthcare fraud prosecutions, many stemming from the pandemic, stood out among the biggest white-collar cases in Texas last year. January 6, 2026
Litigation Roundup: Lawyer Who Leaked Accused Priest’s Name to Reporter Can’t Shake $400K Sanction - In this edition of Litigation Roundup, a divided Fifth Circuit panel revives an excessive force lawsuit against a Lake Worth officer stemming from a 2021 fatal shooting, with the judges sharply criticizing each other in their opinions, and a husband and wife in Fort Worth admit guilt in a custom home building scam that defrauded 40 victims out of about $4.8 million. January 5, 2026
Agency Recommends $9.6M in Fines for Houston-based Midstream for 2022 Deepwater Spill - The U.S. Department of Transportation announced Monday that it is recommending a fine of more than $9.6 million against a Houston-based company for a November 2023 deepwater oil spill off the coast of Louisiana. The penalty is the result of an investigation by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safe Administration and the recommended levy of $9,622,054 is described as the "largest civil penalty ever proposed" by the agency. January 5, 2026
Vistra Buys Cogentrix Energy in Deal Valued at About $4B - Vistra Corp. said Monday that it acquired Cogentrix Energy for about $2.3 billion cash, about $925 million in common shares and the assumption of $1.5 billion of debt. Vistra used Latham & Watkins, Sidley Austin and Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton as outside legal counsel. King & Spalding advised Cogentrix. January 5, 2026
Biggest Texas Verdicts of 2025 - Billions of dollars were awarded by juries in Texas last year in personal injury and patent infringement trials. The largest damage awards were doled out in Bexar and Harris counties. January 5, 2026
The Key Deals of 2025: Business-As-Usual, With a Mona Lisa Smile - The undisputed dealmaker of the year 2025 was artificial intelligence.
Its needs, whether for infrastructure, software, data, cooling, tubing for cooling, electrical parts, real estate or any other basic or specialized situation, seemed to play a role, directly or indirectly, in nearly every deal reported to The Texas Lawbook this year.
Allen Pusey and Jason Philyaw sifted through the more than 1,200 M&A transactions that have passed across our desks over the last 12 months to pick the most significant deals from last year. January 4, 2026
Its needs, whether for infrastructure, software, data, cooling, tubing for cooling, electrical parts, real estate or any other basic or specialized situation, seemed to play a role, directly or indirectly, in nearly every deal reported to The Texas Lawbook this year.
Allen Pusey and Jason Philyaw sifted through the more than 1,200 M&A transactions that have passed across our desks over the last 12 months to pick the most significant deals from last year. January 4, 2026
Asked & Answered with Reid Collins & Tsai’s William Reid: Books, Teaching and Trial - In this edition of Asked & Answered, Reid Collins & Tsai senior founding partner William Reid discusses his new book, Fighting Bullies: A Case for a Career in Plaintiffs’ Law.
In late November, Reid led a team in South Carolina that secured a $112.3 million jury verdict for their client. He is also part of the team representing the court-appointed litigation trustee in the GWG Holdings bankruptcy. Reid and the firm have also has represented Elon Musk's X Corp. in litigation.
Reid recently sat down with The Texas Lawbook to discuss his career and more. (Photo by Dave Cross) January 2, 2026
Texas Lawbook Law Firm of the Year - There were scores of multibillion-dollar corporate mergers and some landmark commercial trial verdicts in 2025. The year was filled with big stories.
But hands down, the biggest story of the year was the Trump administration’s executive orders against large corporate law firms, including a handful that have offices in Texas. December 30, 2025
Centerpiece
CSW Industrials GC Luke Alverson: ‘A Business Leader that Brings Legal Skills to the Table’ - Luke Alverson was a second-year corporate associate at a large corporate firm with a nine-month-old daughter when his 23-year-old brother died in a car accident. “It hit me very hard. Losing Lance didn’t change my world view or values, but it certainly brought them into sharp focus," Alverson told The Texas Lawbook. “It was my ‘What do I want to be in my obituary?’ moment."
Alverson reevaluated his career and is now the GC at CSW he has worked on 17 M&A transactions during the past decade valued at more than $1 billion, including the October 2025 acquisition of heating and air-conditioning parts supplier Motors & Armatures Parts for $650 million. The Association of Corporate Counsel’s DFW Chapter and The Lawbook named Alverson as one of three finalists for the 2025 DFW Corporate Counsel Award for General Counsel of the Year for a Small Legal Department. January 5, 2026
Stephen Myers Leads Match Group in String of High-Stakes Wins - Last December, Match Group's Stephen Myers and his legal team convinced a federal judge to rule that a class action lawsuit accusing Match's Tinder app of being intentionally addictive and seeking hundreds of millions of dollars in damages needed to be handled by arbitration rather than a jury trial. None of the plaintiffs, however, pursued the dispute in arbitration. Match promoted Myers to associate GC and he responded with a handful of extraordinary successes in 2025, including obtaining a highly favorable settlement in a deceptive advertising practices case brought by the Federal Trade Commission and convincing a federal judge in Delaware to grant Match’s summary judgment motion in a long-running patent infringement case.
The ACC’s DFW Chapter and The Texas Lawbook have named Myers a finalist for the 2025 DFW Corporate Counsel Award for Senior Counsel of the Year for a Large Legal Department. January 2, 2026
Expert Voices
Top 10 Legal News for 2025 - In 2025, the Lone Star State was once again at the forefront of some of the biggest legal stories of the year. Join Androvett Legal Media & Marketing as we take a look back at the Top 10 Texas Legal Stories that shaped the past year, including the immigration court crisis, fallout from the 2024 election, and threats to the judiciary. January 2, 2026
Rethinking the Investor-Broker Relationship in Tokenized Real Estate Markets - Illiquidity has always been a feature (and a bug) of real estate transactions. That prime piece of retail space is one of a kind, and you can’t click “sell” on that multifamily asset the same way you can on a share of a blue-chip company. Tokenization is changing that premise by turning the economics of property ownership into fractional tradable units that can be bought or sold through digital exchanges at the touch of a button. This shift matters for corporate counsel because once something trades like a security, the market structure becomes an additional risk on top of the investment itself. December 29, 2025
Stories You Might’ve Missed
The Legacy of Pennzoil v. Texaco 40 Years Later — The Civil Jury Trial of the Century - Pennzoil v. Texaco's legacy remains significant, as it changed how companies handle mergers and acquisitions, caused the Chamber of Commerce to designate Texas as a judicial hellhole in 1986 and directly led to two decades of massive tort reform efforts that dramatically limited the rights of Texans to sue businesses, doctors and insurance companies for wrongdoing. It also launched Texas trial lawyer Joe Jamail to national stardom and made him the richest trial lawyer in American history.
In this in-depth article, The Texas Lawbook provides a detailed timeline of the events involved in the historic litigation, as well as comments from more than a dozen lawyers about the legal strategies employed. November 18, 2025
