Jonathan Ellis was in the third grade when his mother told him about a time a few years earlier when she was changing apartments but was short on money.
“Her prior landlord made up a false pretense to keep her deposit, which was probably $100 or less,” Ellis told The Texas Lawbook. “But this was a time in her life when $100 was life-changing money, and she could not afford to let that go but she didn’t know what to do.”
His mother was working as bookkeeper for a solo lawyer in Midland who offered to write a letter for her.
“A week after the letter went out, the landlord gave her the deposit,” Ellis said. “That story made a big impact on me, because I knew my family had never been in a great position financially and it seemed like this was a career that could help better prepare one to fend off being taken advantage of like her landlord attempted to do to her.”
“My family was not well off. But whatever our situation, I grew up knowing my mom came from a much harder place,” he said.
Three decades later, Ellis is the general counsel of San Antonio-headquartered Stakeholder Midstream, which focuses on in-field natural gas and oil crude gathering as well as transportation and storage.
During the past year, Ellis and the oil and gas midstream company have scored major successes, including closing a series of highly technical transactions on the company’s cutting-edge carbon capture sequestration project in Yoakum County and a series of complex M&A transactions that industry leaders predict will “propel the business toward sustainable success.”
“Jonathan has faced numerous high-pressure challenges, which has frequently required him to manage multiple projects at once using outside counsel from different law firms,” said Clifford Chance partner Todd Lowther. “During these periods of uncertainty, he has remained a steady and principled leader, guiding both executive leadership and the outside legal teams with clarity, composure and an unwavering focus on ethics and long-term stability. He consistently turns adversity into opportunity, reinforcing the company’s culture of vision and excellence.”
The Association of Corporate Counsel’s San Antonio Chapter and The Texas Lawbook are awarding the 2025 San Antonio Corporate Counsel Award for General Counsel of the Year for a Solo Legal Department to Ellis.
Premium Subscriber Q&A: Jonathan Ellis shares the biggest mistakes he’s seen outside counsel make in working with in-house counsel and describes in more detail how being a lawyer has shaped him as a pastor (and vice versa).
Ellis and 11 other recipients of the inaugural San Antonio Corporate Counsel Awards will be honored Nov. 6 at a ceremony in San Antonio.
Lowther, who nominated Ellis for the award, said that Ellis “exemplifies the highest standards of legal excellence and ethical leadership” and “has consistently demonstrated extraordinary strategic value to the Stakeholder business team through transformative legal work, resilience under pressure and a commitment to getting the job done right.”
“Under Jonathan’s leadership, the legal department has evolved from a transactional support function into a trusted strategic partner driving sustainable growth and risk-aware innovation,” Lowther said. “As a solo general counsel, Jonathan manages the legal function with precision and efficiency. It can easily be said that Jonathan finds ways to do a lot with a little to make a big impact on many.”
Jackson Walker partner Reagan Marble said that Ellis has an “unwavering commitment to balancing legal precision with practical business needs.”
“In the fast-paced oil and gas world where legal and commercial priorities often compete, Jonathan consistently demonstrates the ability to address complex legal issues promptly and pragmatically, never allowing time pressures to compromise the quality of his counsel,” Marble said.
Marble said that Ellis is always “thoughtful and inclusive” in how he approaches matters.
“He never overlooks or dismisses concerns raised by either legal or commercial teams, regardless of how urgent the situation may be,” he said. “Instead, he takes the time to understand each issue, asks insightful and analytical questions and provides well-considered, meaningful responses.”
Ellis was born in Amarillo. His parents worked a variety of jobs — bookkeeper, stocking newspaper stands and selling Discovery toys — before both became public-school teachers. His dad taught music and special education. His mom taught English and math. While the family moved several times during his childhood, he spent his high school years in Tulia.
After graduating in 2008 from West Texas A&M with a bachelor’s degree in political science and a minor in legal studies, Ellis earned a master’s degree in political science and government. In 2013, he earned his law degree from Texas Tech University.
The week after Ellis took the state bar exam in August 2013, he joined TexStar Midstream Services as a contract administrator “with the understanding that if I passed the bar then I’d be promoted to one of the in-house corporate counsel positions,” Ellis said. A few months later, he learned he had passed.
TexStar merged with Southcross Energy Partners a few months after that.
“I didn’t even know what ‘midstream’ meant when I went to interview at TexStar Midstream Services,” he said. “I thought I was supposed to be a tax attorney, because in law school it seemed like I was experiencing much more success in tax-related areas than in any other field.”
Ellis, an avid weightlifter, said he never expected to go into oil and gas.
“In fact, if you would have asked me what I wanted to do post-law school, I would have said, ‘I’m not sure what I do want to do, but I know what I do not want to do and I do not want to do criminal or oil and gas.’ But I sent out around 80 applications, mostly for tax positions, and none of them bore fruit, so I started to broaden my search,” he said.
After spending two years as corporate counsel for Flatrock Engineering and Environmental, he joined Stakeholder Midstream in 2017.
Eight years later, Ellis’s role as a sole in-house counsel touches on a plethora of subject matters, including employment law, Texas Railroad Commission and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission regulations, real property issues, litigation, construction and intellectual property.
“I’d say the majority of my time is spent on drafting and negotiating commercial midstream agreements or vendor agreements,” he said.
Ellis, a deeply religious man who is also a volunteer church pastor at The Well Community Church, said Stakeholder is the ideal company for him and quoted Colossians 3:23: “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters.”
“I have found the difficulty of obeying that passage depends greatly on the type of people you work with and for,” he said. “At Stakeholder I have found it to be very easy to obey that passage, because this is a place that is filled with people of integrity, compassion, diligence and excellence — and I can say that of every single person I work with from the top of the chain to the bottom.”
“I joke now that I ‘lawyer’ in order to feed by pastoring habit,” Ellis said. “I am the lay pastor, so I am not able to devote as much time to my ministry — most of which revolves around one-on-one or small group counseling — as the other pastors at The Well, but one of the great things that I have found about my career path in particular is it has given me flexibility to give the right amount of attention to all of my various responsibilities. It is not easy, and my days are usually packed, but once I discovered that this career path could support all four roles, I think I was pretty determined to pursue it.”
Ellis said his biggest challenge since becoming GC of Stakeholder Midstream eight years ago has been the need to understand that he is not an expert in everything the job requires.
“The difficulty comes in knowing when it is helpful to your client to reach out to outside counsel to supplement your expertise and when it is not,” he said. “If I’ve done a preliminary analysis on an issue and prepared my own solution, and then I reach out to outside counsel and they tell me nothing different than what I came up with, then I may have just wasted my client’s dollars. The challenge is finding that balance.”
Ellis said he asks himself questions, including, “Does this fall within my area of expertise? Do I have the bandwidth to do the research and work on it? Can I meet the timeline your client needs?”
“If I find I have to say ‘no’ to one of those criteria, I should probably reach out for help. It’s not always easy striking that balance,” he said.
One of Ellis’ most notable achievements during the past year has been closing a series of transactions involving Stakeholder Midstream’s cutting-edge carbon capture sequestration project in Yoakum County.
“Jonathan worked closely with the Stakeholder business team to deliver an operational carbon capture and sequestration project that is capable of sequestering greater than 120,000 metric tons of carbon oxide annually, which is equivalent to the carbon footprint of 16,000 households or the average absorption capacity of 5.5 million adult trees,” Clifford Chance’s Lowther wrote in nominating Ellis for the award.
The Campo Viejo gathering system and plant optimize carbon oxide management by injecting it into a secure storage formation over two miles below the surface and more than 10,000 feet below the water table.
“In achieving this goal, Jonathan worked closely with engineers and outside professionals to expand his skillset to cover the broad range of regulatory, tax and renewable energy disciplines needed to enhance operations and processes for the sequestration project,” Lowther wrote. “Jonathan’s commitment to completing this project has put Stakeholder in a market-leading position to reduce carbon emissions across the oil and gas value chain.”
During the past two years, Stakeholder has doubled the size of the West Texas plant.
“All the work that went into procurement and construction for that expansion — and more importantly the commercial agreements that justified that expansion — were a huge success for our team,” Ellis said.
Jackson Walker partner Jesse S. Lotay said Ellis has helped Stakeholder navigate expansion and “rapid and sometimes unpredictable shifts in the oil and gas marketplace.”
“Throughout these periods, Jonathan provides steady, insightful guidance that is instrumental in enabling Stakeholder to continue seizing new opportunities,” Lotay said. “Jonathan has a deep operational understanding of Stakeholder’s business — an understanding that rivals even the most seasoned oil and gas law firm partners. He consistently demonstrates the ability to anticipate challenges, adapt to evolving business needs and implement legal strategies that support Stakeholder’s objectives. Jonathan’s agility and composure in the face of change have ensured that Stakeholder remains both resilient and competitive.”
Fun Facts: Jonathan Ellis
- Favorite book: Counseling the Hard Cases, edited by Stuart Scott and Heath Lambert. Most of my ministry revolves around one-on-one counseling and particularly counseling those who have exhausted all other options and still found no relief. This book presents cases of healing and restoration from some of the most extreme cases imaginable and can help someone wrestling with such a thought to finally overcome that first hurdle.
- Favorite movie: After eight years of marriage, I think my wife has succeeded in converting me to adopt one of her favorites: Stranger than Fiction.
- Favorite vacation: We took our girls (3 and 5) to Breckenridge, Colorado, this past summer, and it was the first vacation we’ve taken where they were old enough to actually enjoy more mature things like a mountain hike or a tour of a silver mine. So that has probably been my favorite thus far.
- Favorite restaurant: Best Quality Daughter in the Pearl. I think Asian American is a difficult genre of food to elevate, but they do it well and consistently.
- Hero in life: My uncle Darwin, who passed in 2021. He was a humble man who loved God and worked his whole life harder than any man I’ve known. He grew up a farmer, joined the navy, fought in the Korean War, came home, kept working in ag-related jobs until he retired, then stayed active in church and community until he passed. What stuck with me was he was just a humble hard worker with a servant’s heart his whole life, and that is something I aspire to.