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Legendary Trial Lawyer H. Lee Godfrey Dies - In an announcement, the firm said he died following a long illness. In 1982, Godfrey joined his friend, Steve Susman, who launched his own firm two years earlier. Together, the pair built Susman Godfrey into a preeminent, commercial litigation boutique with a reputation for taking big cases on a contingency basis. June 2, 2025
U.S. Trustee and Jackson Walker to Mediate Judge Jones Fee Dispute - Jackson Walker has agreed to attempt to mediate claims brought by federal officials that the Dallas-based law firm should be forced to return millions of dollars it was paid in legal fees from 33 bankruptcy cases in which Jackson Walker lawyers failed to disclose that one of its former partners had a romantic relationship with the Houston judge who was presiding over those cases. The U.S. Bankruptcy Trustee in the Southern District of Texas and lawyers for Jackson Walker filed a joint notice Friday stating that they “intend to participate in an in-person mediation” between June 16 and July 1.
(2020 file photo of David Jones by Brett Coomer/Houston Chronicle via Getty) June 1, 2025TX Chief Justice ‘Urgent Memo’ to Legislature: Texas Judicial Pay is an ‘Embarrassment’ and Pleads for 11th Hour Pay Hike - New Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Jimmy Blacklock sent a last-minute email on Saturday to members of the state house and senate with the subject line “Urgent Memo”, begging them to hike the compensation of judges, which currently ranks 49th in the U.S. — only West Virginia pays its judges less. May 31, 2025
Motion: Gateway Church Lead Counsel David Middlebrook ‘Must Be Disqualified’ - Lawyers for Robert Morris, the former Gateway Church pastor who had an inappropriate relationship with a teenager decades ago, asked a Fort Worth judge to remove one of the lead attorneys representing the church in litigation over disputed financial payments. In court documents filed Friday, Morris’ attorneys want the judge hearing the case to disqualify David Middlebrook, Gateway’s longtime outside general counsel, because he previously represented Morris in several matters, including giving Morris legal advice about the issues that are at the heart of the current dispute. May 30, 2025
President Names Career Prosecutor as NDTX U.S. Attorney - President Donald Trump has named Nancy E. Larson, a career federal prosecutor, as the Acting United States Attorney for the Northern District of Texas. May 30, 2025
GATX, Brookfield to Purchase Wells Fargo Railway Fleet for $4.4B - The deal, advised by Skadden and Mayer Brown, involves 105,000 rail cars, a potential 10-year buyout by GATX and a separate purchase of Wells Fargo rail leasing assets. May 30, 2025
Centerpiece
Gibson Dunn Partner Launches Solo Dallas Firm to ‘Reengineer Litigation Models for Businesses’ - Texas legal history is replete with young hot-shot trial lawyers leaving their big corporate firms to start their own operations — from David Beck, Paul Yetter and John Zavitsanos in Houston to Mike Lynn, Pete Marketos and Clayton Bailey of Dallas. This week, John S. Adams hopes to join this elite group of highly successful trial lawyers-turned-business leaders who have their name on the front door. Friday was Adams’ last day as a partner in the Dallas office of the elite global law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. Today, he launched his own law litigation boutique, the John S. Adams Law Firm, where he is the only lawyer but plans to add lawyers quickly. June 2, 2025
CDT Roundup: Another Week for the $20B Streak, Unusual Deals and a SPAC Twist - The week ending May 31 saw 19 deals reported involving Texas businesses or Texas lawyers. They were valued at $23.4 billion, representing the fourth week in a row reporting transactions valued at a total of $20 billion or more. Last week, we saw 15 deals for $24 billion. And this time last year, there were 12 transactions for $34 billion. And it was a week that was more than usually unusual. June 2, 2025
Expert Voices
What Two Former Texas U.S. Attorney’s Office Heads Want Business Leaders to Know About DOJ Corporate Enforcement in 2025 - The C-suite crowd seems to be letting out a collective sigh of relief at the dawn of a perceived era of decreased enforcement, while compliance officers worry aloud about their businesses moving resources to other parts of the company and letting up on their carefully cultivated “cultures of compliance.” We read the room differently, and we thought it important to share seven reasons why there has never been a more important time to keep your compliance frameworks in place and, if possible, provide even more resources to them. June 2, 2025
Defamed by a Llama — Legal Consequences of AI-Generated Falsehoods - There are many ways to be defamed: verbal rumors, print news stories, television news stories and social media posts, just to name a few. But now — based on a newly filed lawsuit against Meta for its “Llama” AI program — we have to add “defamation by artificial intelligence” to our lexicon. May 29, 2025
