A headline in The Texas Lawbook seemed to recur almost weekly between 2015 and 2018: “Oil & Gas Executive Spends Investor Money on Booze, Blow and Strippers.”
Next to each of the dozens of financial fraud articles was a photo of then-U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Regional Director Shamoil Shipchandler, who was pursuing the allegations against the corrupt energy leaders.
“I’m just glad that young children don’t read The Texas Lawbook or they would think I am the worst fraudster in history,” Shipchandler told a CLE program in 2018.
While Shipchandler’s landmark successes as a high-profile white-collar Texas prosecutor and the SEC’s top corporate cop pursuing financial criminals such as self-proclaimed frack master Christopher Faulkner and top executives at AriseBank made big news, the biggest successes these days for Shipchandler as chief counsel at Charles Schwab are never known outside the West Lake-headquartered financial giant.
“Most of the successes of my group cannot be publicly celebrated because they are confidential,” Shipchandler told The Lawbook. “For example, closing nonpublic regulatory investigations or securing millions of dollars in [Financial Industry Regulatory Authority] arbitration victories.”
That being said, Shipchandler and his team of 15 lawyers and 11 other legal professionals have scored some huge successes that are public, including:
- Fended off challenges to Schwab’s robo-advisor product, Schwab Intelligent Portfolios, among several class and derivative actions that sought more than $500 million in damages;
- Resolved the SEC’s industrywide investigation into the use of off-channel communications for a fraction of the amounts sought by the federal government and paid by other financial institutions that were targeted;
- Negotiated a highly favorable agreement to resolve an antitrust class action alleging that Schwab’s acquisition of TD Ameritrade reduced competition in violation of the Clayton Act; and
- Defeated a lawsuit that sought a temporary restraining order after a group left a financial services company in order to create a new company and custody assets with Schwab.
“I work with the best and most interesting legal team at Schwab and in financial services,” Shipchandler said. “Put another way, I come to a beautiful campus, come up to my office that has a terrific view, work on the most cutting-edge issues out there and do it with people whom I consider to be my good friends. I wouldn’t trade places with anyone.”
The Association of Corporate Counsel’s DFW Chapter and The Texas Lawbook have named Shipchandler and his team at Schwab as a finalist for the 2025 DFW Corporate Counsel Award for DFW Corporate Legal Department of the Year.
The 2025 DFW finalists will be honored and the winners announced on Jan. 29 at the DFW Corporate Counsel Awards ceremony at the George W. Bush Institute.
“Shamoil is fearless and will not hesitate to fight when his client has been wronged,” said Sidley Austin partner Angela Zambrano, who nominated Shipchandler and the Schwab legal team for the award. “Shamoil will get in and do the work on a case. He gives his team incredible latitude to operate and make decisions, but he also enjoys litigating with the team when he has the chance.”
“Over the past year, the company’s litigation enforcement investigations group has achieved remarkable results in forums across the country and across a variety of matters, including matters based in securities law, banking law, contract law, employment law, antitrust law, insurance law and construction law,” said Zambrano, who is co-leader of Sidley’s Dallas office. “The small but mighty team of lawyers and support professionals defending Schwab are responsible for handling and resolving every form of adversarial matter, whether it arises through litigation or through interaction with a regulator, and whether it occurs at the state, federal or international level.”
“Whether advising on a new investment product, determining how to get investors the right information or resolving day-to-day legal matters across more than 380 branches in the U.S. and U.K. serving 36.5 million active brokerage accounts, the team consistently demonstrates agility and foresight,” Zambrano said. “Their ability to align legal strategy with Schwab’s business objectives — while maintaining credibility with regulators and adversaries alike — sets a benchmark for excellence in the industry and makes the team a deserving candidate for Corporate Legal Department of the Year.”
Texas lawyers who work with Shipchandler and the Schwab team repeatedly highlight how closely they work together.
“Shamoil doesn’t just know the law better than most, he understands it better than most,” Baker Botts partner John Lawrence said. “As a result, he is extremely practical and incisive in charting the best path forward. People follow Shamoil’s lead because they know from experience that he’s almost surely already on the right path. People want to be around him, and led by him, because they know he cares about them personally. No interaction with Shamoil ever feels transactional.”
“Shamoil has many legal successes in his five years at Schwab, but his biggest success of all has to be the team he has built,” Lawrence said. “He took on the job during the pandemic, for a company that had just moved halfway across the country, in an industry that requires incredibly sophisticated and specialized team members up and down the board. Watching his team now, you would think they’d all been working closely together for a decade. And every single one of them is truly stellar.”
Schwab General Counsel Peter Morgan said the financial giant hired Shipchandler in 2021 to lead the company’s litigation and enforcement defense team “because his background fit exactly what we were trying to build.”
“We needed a leader who could handle high-stakes matters, set the right tone with regulators and adversaries and bring discipline to how we make decisions early in a case,” Morgan told The Lawbook. “I have tried to hire leaders who combine deep subject-matter expertise with judgment, courage, and the ability to lead through influence and relationships. Shamoil is a great example of that. He has real first-chair litigation capability, he understands enforcement from the inside, and he brings the credibility and network to be effective in complex matters.”
In 2021, Schwab, a financial institution with more than 32,000 employees and managing $11 trillion in client assets, moved its headquarters from San Francisco to North Texas.
“We do not build ‘stars’. We build teams,” Morgan said. “Shamoil is representative of that mindset, and, frankly, so are all nine of my direct reports. Each of them brings a different set of strengths, and together that forms the leadership mosaic that makes the department work.
“If I had to point to what Shamoil brings to that mosaic, it is the combination of high-end litigation and enforcement judgment with a very grounded, client-first way of leading,” he said. “He is rigorous, steady under pressure, and he has good instincts about what matters and what does not. He knows when to push and when to resolve, and he keeps the focus on protecting clients and the firm, not winning for its own sake. Most importantly, he collaborates early and shares information freely so we show up with one integrated point of view, which is exactly how we want the entire team to operate.”
RELATED: Introducing Charles Schwab GC Peter Morgan — An Exclusive Q&A with The Texas Lawbook
The Early Years
Shipchandler, 52, was born in Austin but grew up in multiple states, including Texas, Connecticut and Colorado. The family moved often because his dad was an electrical engineer who led projects — many of them with Texas Instruments. His mom led various social services organizations.
“I was a Gen X kid. Independence, neglect-by-design, drinking out of rusty hoses, Saturday morning cartoons and some dark humor about it all,” said Shipchandler, who is married with four children ages 5 to 19. “In the kids, I have now experienced firsthand what it’s like to be confronted with aspects of your own personality. So, I’m very, very sorry to anyone who interacts with me on a regular basis.”
Shipchandler graduated from Middlebury College in Vermont and Cornell Law School in New York, becoming the first lawyer in his family.
Premium Subscriber Q&A: Shamoil Shipchandler discusses the traits he seeks in outside counsel, what outside counsel need to know when working with him and more.
He said the idea of being a lawyer first popped up in elementary school, “where one or two teachers mentioned it.”
“But I will go to great lengths to say that it was not because I was otherwise argumentative, but rather because I loved to read and write,” he said. “It could have been because higher-level math wasn’t a strong suit. Sorry, dad. Is there anything that one does in calculus other than taking the derivative?”
“I joke that given the stereotype of Indian parents and my brother being a doctor, mom and dad are very disappointed in me,” he said.
The White-Collar Sheriff
After three years of practicing at Covington & Burling, Shipchandler joined the U.S. attorney’s office in the Eastern District of Texas where he served as deputy criminal chief prosecuting white-collar fraud cases for a decade.
“The U.S. attorney’s office was a formative experience,” he said. “That’s where I believe I became a lawyer. I often talk to my students about discovering who you are. For example, moving from copying the styles of folks you see to becoming the authentic you in a courtroom or a boardroom or on stage. For me, the courtroom appearances, trying cases, teaching at the National Advocacy Center and working with incredible federal agents — I’m looking at you, Rick Velasquez and Darrell James — were all ways in which I found my true voice.”
In 2014, he joined Bracewell as a partner in its Dallas office, where he practiced white-collar criminal defense for 18 months.
In September 2015, SEC Chairwoman Mary Jo White appointed Shipchandler regional director of the SEC’s Fort Worth regional office.
David Woodcock, a partner at Gibson Dunn in Dallas and Shipchandler’s predecessor at the SEC, said the former federal prosecutor-turned-corporate in-house counsel “has built one of the strongest legal departments around.”
“Shamoil has great judgment and stays calm and decisive no matter the situation,” Woodcock said. “Even when things don’t go well, he responds in a steady, thoughtful way. That’s one of the many reasons he’s so easy to work with. Beyond his wicked sense of humor, what really sets him apart is that he doesn’t just come up with creative solutions, he’s willing to act on them.”
“He is willing to take risks but always in a thoughtful way,” he said. “This is because he has the full trust of the C-suite and a history of success.”
Shipchandler said the SEC experience was far different than his time as a federal prosecutor.
“The SEC was about stepping into a new agency and learning to lead a large organization,” he said. “Leadership is … hard. It’s all consuming. And it’s something that you need to work on every day. Nothing in law school prepares you for leading a group of folks through the death of a beloved colleague, for example, or the now-second longest shutdown in government history. But those experiences do teach you resiliency and strength of character. So, my learning both who I am and how I lead are what I have brought with me to Schwab.”
Shipchandler left the SEC in January 2019 to join the global law firm Jones Day, which has one of the most respected white-collar and corporate investigations law practices in the U.S.
Jones Day partner Peter Laun said Shipchandler has a “quiet but very effective leadership style.”
The Corporate Counselor
“Shamoil encourages brainstorming and creativity, and empowers the people he works with to take responsibility and control of their matters, using him as a sounding-board as needed,” Laun said. “Shamoil hires experts where needed and fully relies on them, with no ego or micromanagement. He is not afraid to say he doesn’t know the answer to something but also asks penetrating questions that make his internal team members and outside counsel think holistically about strategy. He has a unique grasp of how to motivate and engage with his team and outside counsel — his strong interpersonal skills make his team feel engaged and appreciated.”
What led Shipchandler to go in-house and specifically to Schwab in 2021?
“Two things: First, I’d been at the government, I’d tried cases, and I’d been in private practice. But I’d never been in-house before,” he told The Lawbook. “So, this was a unique opportunity to lead a brand-new team at an incredible company at the cutting edge of financial services. And second, Peter Morgan. Peter is a brilliant, creative lawyer who excels at providing deep strategic insights through all sorts of complex matters. That partnership was very appealing.”
Shipchandler said the biggest legal and business challenges he and his team have faced since joining Schwab involved resources and “a shifting regulatory landscape.”
“I would suspect that most in-house practitioners would name resources as a challenge,” he said. “In our cases, after the integration of Ameritrade, our legal group became smaller. As such, with a larger employee population and a larger client base, we truly are expected to do more with less. With respect to the regulatory environment, shifting priorities and uncertainty related to rulemaking or enforcement always poses challenges for a growing and complex business like ours.”
Shipchandler said his biggest accomplishments since joining Schwab have been “providing resources to my folks and removing obstacles in their path to put them in a position to succeed.”
“My success is not mine to own, it’s theirs,” he said. “So, what we have worked on as a team has been calibrating our approach to the risk tolerance of the firm’s leaders; providing strategic, actionable legal advice to our business partners; and creatively and formidably defending our brand. The most significant measure of our success is how much our strategic advice is trusted by the firm’s leadership team.”
Schwab’s Most Important Litigation and Regulatory Victories
— Defeated challenges to Schwab’s robo-advisor product, Schwab Intelligent Portfolios, among several class and derivative actions. In 2024, the company won dismissal of a derivative action claiming that Schwab’s directors and officers oversaw SIP in bad faith. And in 2025, Schwab won dismissal of amended allegations in the derivative suit. After this defeat, the derivative plaintiff abandoned its right to appeal, bringing the last of the SIP lawsuits to a close. This was led by Schwab Managing Director of Legal Joe Siders and Managing Director Greg Scanlon.
— Resolved the SEC’s industrywide sweep investigation into the use of off-channel communications for a fraction of the amounts sought by the government and resolved by other industry participants. This was led by Schwab Managing Director Chris Richie and Deputy Chief Counsel Leigh Shea.
— Negotiated an agreement to resolve an antitrust class action alleging that Schwab’s acquisition of TD Ameritrade reduced competition in violation of the Clayton Act that was accepted by the district court. Schwab agreed to implement an antitrust compliance program but will not make any payment to the proposed settlement class. This was led by Schwab Managing Director Chris Richie and Shipchandler.
— Won dismissal of an Illinois federal court lawsuit that alleged that Schwab and others colluded to monopolize the RIA custody business and maximize revenue through preferential programs.
— Secured dismissal in a Texas federal count on a complaint alleging that Schwab and other financial institutions engaged in a yearslong conspiracy to defraud a wealthy individual in the provision of financial services.
Fun Facts: Shamoil Shipchandler
“These are so tough to narrow down into one selection for each one! I’m playing along in the spirit of the thing, but please note my standing objection. Overruled, I get it, but still. I’m preserving my rights for appeal.” — Shipchandler
- Favorite book: I should have a leg up on this one since I just wrote the “Five Favorite Books” column. But I don’t because I took too many liberties with writing that one. If I’m forced to pick just one though, I’m going to go with Dune. I read Dune when I was in middle school, and I was blown away by the incredible universe building. Frank Herbert not only wrote a story; he invented an entire ecosystem, an economy, a religion and a political order.
- Favorite music group: I absolutely love live music. We see so many shows across several genres. But if I must pick one, I’m picking Disturbed. Cue the pyrotechnics!
- Favorite movie: Monty Python’s Life of Brian with The Princess Bride as a close second. A very close second.
- Favorite restaurant: Blue Goose, specifically for the salsa and, uh, “one” Diablo. I don’t even need an entrée.
- Favorite beverage: I’m a big fan of Toco Chico Lime on an anytime basis. But get me to a craft brewery and I’m delighted.
- Favorite vacation: It’s so tempting to simply say, “the last one taken.” But in this case, it might very well be true. We visited the Big Island of Hawaii for the first time — it was so beautiful — and we went skydiving. Now that’s a view!
- Hero in life: My mom. If everyone were like my mom, the world would be a much nicer place.