Steven Scheinthal won his first oral argument and trial when he was nine years old.
His fourth-grade teacher required the class to write and type a short paper. Scheinthal didn’t know how to type, so he paid another student $5 to do it for him.
“The day the paper was due, the other student failed to come to class, and I was petrified. I had to explain to the teacher why I didn’t turn in the assignment,” Scheinthal told The Texas Lawbook. “When the student came to class the next day, the teacher turned the student’s failure to deliver the paper as promised into a trial, with me as the plaintiff suing him and the class as the jury deciding the outcome.”
“I won the trial — but it was 50 years ago and I don’t remember the punishment,” he said.
And he was hooked on the law.
Five decades later, Scheinthal has one of the most unique and challenging jobs in corporate law — the general counsel for Tilman Fertitta, whose business holdings include the NBA’s Houston Rockets, the Golden Nugget casinos and hotels, Landry’s Seafood and Morton’s and Del Frisco’s steakhouses. The Houston billionaire is also reportedly interested in acquiring Caesars casinos and hotels.
“It is tough having one boss because his frustrations become yours,” Scheinthal said. “However, we have had a tremendous number of business successes from our IPO to follow on offerings, over 50-plus acquisitions, bond offerings, the Rockets purchase, etc. Dealing with the financial crisis and then later the pandemic when all of our businesses were shut down with no revenue coming in and figuring out how to survive and ultimately thrive was most rewarding.”
In all, Scheinthal has led the entrepreneur through more than 50 acquisitions in building the $10 billion empire that is Fertitta Entertainment.
Scheinthal’s successes continued in 2025. There was the major confidential settlement he achieved in Harris County against insurance giants such as Chubb and AIG in a business interruption case, and there were multimillion-dollar wins in three discrimination cases at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. In 2024, Fertitta acquired the River Oaks District in Houston for $450 million and the Montage Laguna Beach for roughly $660 million.
Citing his numerous achievements, the Association of Corporate Counsel’s Houston Chapter and The Lawbook are honoring Scheinthal with the 2026 Houston Corporate Counsel Award for General Counsel of the Year for a Midsized Legal Department (six to 20 attorneys).
ACC and The Lawbook will celebrate Scheinthal and 18 other Houston-area corporate in-house counsel on May 28.
John Zavitsanos, managing partner of Ahmad, Zavitsanos & Mensing, praised Scheinthal’s staying power in long-running litigation.
“Steve has litigation endurance. Over the rollercoaster of litigation, Steve does not wear down easily. We have not seen him wear down at all,” said Zavitsanos. “Many clients suffer litigation fatigue when a complex dispute takes three to five years to resolve through the court system. That fatigue leads companies to settle at the wrong time, when they have suffered a loss.”
Premium Subscriber Q&A: Steven Scheinthal discusses the traits he seeks in outside counsel, what outside counsel need to know when working with him and more.
“Steve does not fall prey to this trap because he can endure the process,” said Zavitsanos, who nominated Scheinthal for the award. “He takes wins and losses in stride and remains level-headed. He brings this resilience to his decisions about outside counsel as well. We have secured wins and losses for Landry’s, and Steve continues to retain us. Steve knows risk of loss is part of litigation, and that risk alone cannot drive decision-making at the exclusion of everything else.”
Ian Schuman, a New York partner at Latham & Watkins, said Scheinthal is “exceptionally smart with a terrific analytical mind.”
“Steven is curious and seeks his own understanding, as opposed to simply relying on the output advice from advisors,” said Schuman, who represented Fertitta Entertainment in its recent purchase of the WNBA team Connecticut Sun, which will be rebranded as the Comets upon relocation to Houston. “As a GC, this combination is extremely effective. Nobody will know the business model, culture, values and the other inputs that are critical the company’s business better than those executives tasked with executing against those goals. The outside advisors will never understand it as well. As Steven gains more substantive knowledge through each issue and undertaking, he becomes that much more effective at making sure the counsel fits the goals of the company.”
Hunton AK Houston partner Mark Arnold, who has represented Fertitta Entertainment on the purchase of the Golden Nugget and numerous other transactions, said Scheinthal “combines strong legal judgment with a practical business mindset.”
“Steve understands not just what the law says, but how legal advice affects operations, strategy, risk tolerance and long-term growth,” Arnold said. “He is thoughtful, disciplined and extremely thorough, but he never loses sight of the bigger picture.”
“What makes him a particularly strong general counsel is that he knows how to be both a protector of the business and a partner to it,” Arnold said. “He does not create obstacles for the sake of being cautious. He helps the company move forward in a smart, responsible way. He knows when to push, when to negotiate, when to stand firm and when to find a workable solution.”
The Early Years
Scheinthal was born in New York City but grew up in Miami. His dad owned a gas station, and his mother was a homemaker.
There were no lawyers in the family. When he was 12 years old, he joined the junior high school debate group.
“I knew then that I wanted to be a lawyer,” he said.
Scheinthal earned his bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Florida in 1981.
“I graduated undergrad in two years due to placement tests — I started college as a junior,” he said.
In 1984, he earned his law degree from the University of Houston. During law school, he clerked for legendary criminal lawyer Mike Ramsey.
At age 21, he started practicing law with the Houston litigation boutique Stumpf and Falgout. The firm represented Fertitta in part because Skip Falgout III and Fertitta were first cousins.
‘I Want Him Handling My Work’
Scheinthal was in his law office one day in 1988 when his boss walked in and tossed a file on his desk.
“You need to file an answer on this case but do not put much time into it because this case cannot be won — our client has no defense, and the client is filing for bankruptcy because of this case,” the senior lawyer told Scheinthal.
The client was Fertitta, owner of Landry’s Seafood, and the dispute involved a promissory note to buy out a party’s interest in Houston’s Willie G’s Seafood. Fertitta, according to the litigation, could not meet his financial commitment.
A few days later, Scheinthal stumbled across a file that had some interesting details about the litigation.
Scheinthal filed an answer to the lawsuit on the final day of the deadline. The plaintiff immediately filed a motion for summary judgment, and Scheinthal filed his response asking the judge to deny summary judgment.
Lawyers for the plaintiff argued that Scheinthal had missed the deadline.
“I gave the judge my bar card and told him if that if I am wrong about the deadline, he can keep my bar card,” Scheinthal said.
The court gave Scheinthal his bar card back, agreed he had filed in a timely manner and later denied the plaintiff’s motion for summary judgment.
Skip Falgout immediately called Fertitta.
“We won. We won. You don’t have to file bankruptcy,” the senior partner told the client.
Within minutes, Fertitta walked into the firm’s offices.
“Fuck you,” Fertitta said, pointing to the original lawyer assigned to his work. “You don’t ever touch any of my files ever again. I only want you [pointing to Scheinthal] working on my legal matters from now on, or I am taking my business somewhere else.”
Fertitta avoided bankruptcy. The litigation took five years to get set for trial.
“In the meantime, Tilman was able to financially engineer his way to overcome the financial difficulties, and he took the company public in 1993,” Scheinthal said. “And the rest is history.”
In 1992, Fertitta asked Scheinthal to join the company as its first general counsel.
Landry’s went public in 1993 and the Houston company’s estimated value in its IPO was $30 million. Two acquisitions immediately followed — a two-restaurant chain in Little Rock and Memphis in 1993, and Joe’s Crab Shack in 1994.
Thirty-four years later, the successes keep stacking up, as does the value of Landry’s and Fertitta Entertainment, which Forbes now puts at $10.8 billion, reflecting the scale of the business empire Scheinthal advised along the way.
Spencer Fane Houston partner Ed Perkins said Scheinthal’s “breadth of knowledge” has expanded wildly as he has taken Landry’s and Fertitta Entertainment from a startup business to the conglomerate it is today.
“When I first started working with him, he basically was the legal department of the company,” Perkins said. “But he helped grow the company from one of just a handful of restaurants but with an eye to what could be — to one encompassing hundreds of restaurants, hotels, amusements, gaming and sports teams. It has been fascinating to watch the process evolve over the last few decades. The company now has full-fledged in-house legal and risk management departments that function as true partners to the complex, fast-moving enterprise the company has become. Steve helped build that.”
“Even though Steve now functions much more as a general counsel, he never lost the ability to process information through the critical eyes of a trial attorney,” Perkins said. “That has helped him make decisions with an unusually strong understanding of how those judgments will affect the bottom line of the business. He can see risks others might miss. He understands that his role was not just an academic exercise — the law is a tool to help the company accomplish its objectives.”
Golden Nugget & ‘Fisticuffs’
One of Scheinthal’s most memorable transactions for Fertitta was the 2005 purchase of the Golden Nugget casino in Nevada for $140 million.
“During the process of doing the due diligence in buying the Golden Nugget in Las Vegas, we got thrown out of the property by the owner because of contentious negotiations and allegations that we were not acting in good faith,” Scheinthal told The Lawbook. “We almost got into fisticuffs with some of the representatives of the owner.”
Scheinthal said he and Arnold negotiated with Golden Nugget co-owner Tim Poster and his representatives in one of the casino’s hotel conference rooms. They both remember that Poster had his Rottweiler, which was wearing a diamond-encrusted collar, with him in the room during the talks.
“That was a bit intimidating,” Arnold said. “And the drinks being brought to us weren’t Coke and Diet Coke, but a tub of Red Bull. As a young lawyer at the time, it was a bit of a different experience.”
At one point during the negotiations, one of the Golden Nugget’s representatives called Fertitta a name in a conference room at the hotel.
“I stood up and said, ‘If you say that again, I’ll clock you.’ And then he stood up. I’m 5’7” and he’s 6’5”. So, I was at his chest. The others had to separate us.”
As they were being thrown off the property, Scheinthal convinced Poster to meet with Fertitta one-on-one.
“They ended up cutting a deal between them,” Scheinthal said, noting the transaction closed in September 2005.
Buying the Rockets and Saving $200M
Scheinthal said his best day working for Fertitta came in 2017 when they closed the purchase of the Rockets.
“Walking into the Toyota Center for that first game — the feeling was incredible,” he said.
But Scheinthal said his boss had doubts his offer would be accepted by the sellers.
“There were other bidders, and there was a belief that we were not the favorite bidder,” he said. “Tilman was concerned we were not going to get the team. Tilman said he was too emotionally involved, and he told me that I needed to handle it all.”
“Tilman came to me and said, ‘Look, I have to have the team. You tell them whatever bid they have. I’ll pay $200 million more than the highest bid. That will guarantee us the team,’” Scheinthal said.
Scheinthal said he then had multiple conversations with Rafael Stone, then the GC of the Rockets and now the franchise’s general manager, and Tad Brown, who was the Rockets’ CEO at the time.
“When you are in a negotiation, you have to listen. It is not about talking. It is about listening,” Scheinthal said. “So, I said to Tad, ‘Why is our current offer not any good?’ Tad said, ‘Look, you’re good, OK?’ So, I never offered him that extra $200 million. I kept it in my pocket.”
“I told Tilman that, to me, that meant our offer was good and that if we can come up with the money and we show we can have the money, I think the team is ours,” he said.
A few days later, Fertitta bought the Rockets for a then-record $2.2 billion.
“I remind Tilman all the time that I saved him $200 million,” he said.
And the deals kept rolling. Scheinthal helped Fertitta create Golden Nugget Online Gaming from scratch in 2013 after learning that New Jersey planned to legalize online gambling. In 2022, they sold the entity to DraftKings for $1.56 billion.
‘Hire Us & We Will Stop Suing You’
AZA’s Zavitsanos, who nominated Scheinthal for GC of the Year, said the “origins of our relationship with Steve and Landry’s are telling about why Steve deserves this award.”
The Houston litigation boutique had been opposite Landry’s several times over the years, including in a high-profile case about the endangered white tigers at Landry’s Downtown Aquarium. Landry’s sued the Animal Legal Defense Fund for defamation. The case ended up at the Texas Supreme Court in 2021 and resulted in the largest sanction ever awarded under the Texas Citizens Participation Act.
“So, Steve knew of our firm, but we were not on his list of favorite people,” Zavitsanos said.
But during the Covid-19 pandemic, Zavitsanos sent an unsolicited email to Scheinthal suggesting that “he hire AZA so that we would stop suing Landry’s.” Zavitsanos said he expected no response.
“Steve responded within five minutes, which we would later learn is standard for Steve,” Zavitsanos said. “Steve invited me to come meet with him, and Steve liked the idea of hiring AZA to both sideline the firm as his opponents and also have the firm on his side.”
Scheinthal hired AZA to handle a Covid-19 business-interruption insurance coverage case, which Zavitsanos said “was on life support from the start.”
“Steve showed us his true colors on that first engagement: He appreciates creativity, he does not let fear drive decision-making, and he expects everyone on a team to perform at their best,” Zavitsanos said. “Steve does not lead from a place of fear. Steve does not play to avoid losing. He plays to win. This attribute comes from a place of deep trust he has in himself, his company Landry’s and the outside counsel that he hires. Those attributes not only lead to good decisions and great outcomes for Steve.”
Russell M. Yankwitt, a lawyer from White Plains, New York, said Scheinthal “combines strong legal judgment with a real understanding of the business.”
“He knows when to resolve matters efficiently and when to take a stand, and he is not afraid to go to trial when it makes sense,” Yankwitt said. “Too many companies default to settlement, but Steve understands that settling weak claims only invites more of them. He takes a long-term view and is willing to defend the company in a way that ultimately protects it.
“What really sets him apart is how deeply he understands and cares about the business,” he said. “After three decades with Landry’s, he understands it from every angle. He can lead on anything from personal injury and employment matters to contracts, leases and acquisitions. He is not just advising the business, he is an integral part of Landry’s.”
Scheinthal said his reputation and that of the company in the legal and business communities are important to him.
“We see a lot more deals than a lot of other people because we have a good reputation that if we like a deal and we sign a deal, we are going to close the deal,” he said. “If bankers have the belief that Tilman is the best guy to sell to, you get more deals sent to you because you’re deemed more credible.”
“I also like to help out the younger lawyers in our company by sharing stories of my past and mistakes to avoid. I do have a lot of stories, for certain.”
Fun Facts: Steven Scheinthal
- Favorite book: The Grapes of Wrath because of the struggles and triumphs.
- Favorite movie: It’s A Wonderful Life. It makes me feel good every time I watch it. Life isn’t always about money but about being a good person and doing nice things for others that can’t necessarily do things for themselves.
- Favorite drink: Diet Coke, and I love vanilla ice cream. I have a saying, “Everything goes better with vanilla ice cream.”
- Favorite restaurant: Morton’s The Steakhouse. It is always good and consistent. Their bread is amazing, and they always have great quality steaks.
- Favorite vacation: Alaskan cruise. My entire immediate family was there along with our best friend, and we all took a helicopter ride to a glacier and raced around the glacier on dog sleds like the Iditarod. It was a very memorable experience.
- Hero in life: I would have to say my father. His work ethic was like no one. I am sure that is where I get mine from. He was up at 6 a.m. every day, 6 days a week, to open his gas station, and he did it every week, year after year, until he had his heart attack and couldn’t work anymore.