Brinker’s Cam Turner: Father’s Wrongful Imprisonment Inspires Legal Excellence

Cameasha Turner was in the third grade when her mother told her the story of her father's wrongful conviction and life-prison sentence. “It was truly a life-altering moment for me. My dad was 18 when he was wrongfully convicted," Turner told The Texas Lawbook. "Hearing that as a child was heavy. I didn’t know how to process the shame or the hurt, but I did know one thing: It wasn’t right. Wanting justice for my dad is what sparked it, but understanding the power of education is what carried me the rest of the way."

More than two decades later, Cam Turner is corporate counsel at Dallas-based Brinker where she is making major decisions and achieving significant successes on the operations of the multibillion-dollar hospitality company whose restaurant brands include Chili’s and Maggiano’s Little Italy. The Association of Corporate Counsel’s DFW Chapter and The Lawbook have named Turner as a finalist for the 2025 DFW Corporate Counsel Award for Rookie of the Year, which is awarded to counsel who have been in-house for three years or less.

January 9, 2026 Mark Curriden

Introducing Charles Schwab GC Peter Morgan — An Exclusive Q&A with The Texas Lawbook

Charles Schwab's relocation of its global headquarters, including its 150-member corporate legal department, from San Francisco to a 70-acre campus in Westlake’s Circle T Ranch development is complete, and by all accounts, the transition has been hugely successful. The move required a significant amount of infrastructure work by the legal department for Schwab, a multinational financial services company with more than 32,000 employees, $11 trillion in assets under management and a market cap of $178 billion.

“The move itself was real legal work, including banking charter conversions and building new relationships with Texas regulators and the Dallas Fed, and we found the same constructive, execution-oriented approach throughout,” Schwab General Counsel Peter Morgan told The Texas Lawbook in an exclusive interview.

Morgan said Schwab's hiring of two Dallas prominent lawyers — Winstead shareholder Michael O’Neal and Jones Day partner and former U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Regional Director Shamoil Shipchandler — were critical parts of the transition. In the interview, Morgan discusses the Texas legal and business markets and the challenges ahead.

January 7, 2026 Mark Curriden

Schwab Chief Counsel Shamoil Shipchandler ‘Wouldn’t Trade Places with Anyone’

Shamoil Shipchandler scored 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. Shipchandler is still racking up major achievements as chief counsel at Charles Schwab where he leads a team of 15 lawyers and 11 other legal professionals.

“Most of the successes of my group cannot be publicly celebrated because they are confidential,” Shipchandler told The Texas Lawbook. “For example, closing nonpublic regulatory investigations or securing millions of dollars in FINRA arbitration victories.”

The Association of Corporate Counsel’s DFW Chapter and The 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.

January 7, 2026 Mark Curriden

CSW Industrials GC Luke Alverson: ‘A Business Leader that Brings Legal Skills to the Table’

Luke Alverson was a second-year 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, where 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 Mark Curriden

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 Mark Curriden

DFW Celebrates Two Legal In-house Rookies and a Lifetime Achiever

Elaine Rodriguez has been a corporate general counsel, including the past 14 years at DFW Airport, longer than Cameasha Turner and Nur Kara have been alive, but all three are being honored by the Association of Corporate Counsel’s DFW Chapter and The Texas Lawbook.

ACC-DFW and The Lawbook are pleased to announce that Rodriguez is being recognized with the 2025 DFW Corporate Counsel Award for Lifetime Achievement. Past DFW Lifetime Achievement Award recipients include Gary Kennedy of American Airlines, Leanne Oliver of PepsiCo, Chris Luna of T-Mobile, Derek Lipscombe of Toyota and Marita Covarrubias of Tenet Healthcare.

Turner, who is corporate counsel at Brinker International, and Kara, who is the legal director for marketing and advertising at PepsiCo North America, are the finalists for the 2025 DFW Corporate Counsel Award for Rookie of the Year.

December 23, 2025 Mark Curriden

P.S. — DFW Corporate Counsel Awards for Pro Bono and Diversity Announced

At a time when many law firms and legal organizations have suddenly gone quiet related to their pro bono and diversity efforts, a handful of leaders at DFW corporate legal departments are following the advice of the great legal philosopher Bob Seger by going “against the wind.”

The Association of Corporate Counsel’s DFW Chapter and The Texas Lawbook announce that senior counsel at Phillips Enterprises, Toyota North America, 7-Eleven and Jacobs International will be honored for their extraordinary work and successes involving pro bono and public service and diversity and inclusion.

December 19, 2025 Krista Torralva & Mark Curriden

2025 DFW Award Finalists: Senior In-house Counsel at Match, Michaels, Children’s Health, Dropbox and Caris Life Sciences 

Six lawyers at North Texas companies have been named finalists for the 2025 DFW Corporate Counsel Awards for Senior Counsel of the Year. During the past week, ACC-DFW and The Texas Lawbook have announced the finalists for Business Litigation of the Year, M&A Transaction of the Year, General Counsel of the Year and Corporate Legal Department of the Year. The finalists for Rookie of the Year, Lifetime Achievement, Achievement in Pro Bono and Public Service and Achievement in Diversity and Inclusion will be announced later this week. The Lawbook has all the details.

December 17, 2025 Mark Curriden

My Five Favorite Books: Shamoil Shipchandler

When I set out to write this column, I thought about all the ways in which I’d try to impress you. Law is, after all, a see-and-be-seen profession! Perhaps I’d start with William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying and its dense stream-of-consciousness prose (I can’t stand it). Or the scope and cultural impact of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest (I couldn’t get through it). Or maybe I’d do something unexpected about influential children’s books and write about Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree (a truly awful, dreadful thing – I won’t be taking any questions at this time).

But what I kept coming back to was something that plays a huge role in my personal and professional life: humor. So, I chose five books that never fail to make me laugh.

December 10, 2025 Shamoil Shipchandler

Texas GC Forum Awards 20th Annual Magna Stella Honors

The Texas General Counsel Forum recently honored 10 chief legal officers and senior in-house counsel with the 20th annual Magna Stella Awards, which recognizes success and leadership. 

The awards ceremony, held Nov. 20 at the Hyatt Regency Hill Country Resort in San Antonio, unveiled the lifetime achievement award in honor of GC Forum CEO Lynn Bozalis, a beloved leader in the Texas corporate law community.

November 28, 2025 Mark Curriden