Christina Ibrahim’s accomplishments at Weatherford International include multiple large M&A deals and guiding the oil services company through a highly successful bankruptcy and restructuring that eliminated $6 billion in debt. But her achievement was much different, much deeper and much more important. The Association of Corporate Counsel Houston and The Texas Lawbook award the 2020 Houston Corporate Counsel’s General Counsel of the Year Award for a Large Legal Department to Ibrahim.
UPDATED: Houston Appellate Races Tighten Between Red & Blue (Again); Dems Sweep Dallas COA Races
The four races for seats on Houston’s First and Fourteenth courts of appeals are incredibly close. Three incumbent Republican justices are leading their opponents by 1%, while one Democratic candidate is ahead of the GOP incumbent justice by 1%. By contrast, three Democratic district court judges are leading the incumbent Republican justices on the Dallas Court of Appeals by significant margins. Natalie Posgate has the details.
Texas Judicial Election Results
The Texas Lawbook has five journalists tonight – election night – covering the judicial appellate and trial court races and will provide details as the election results are provided.
“Well, that was unexpected…” Panel Considers SCOTX Term
The state’s highest court dealt with a number of issues this past term — a COVID-19 pandemic, changes in personnel and a ransomware attack. But the court also heard a few cases, and a quartet of appellate experts from Beck Redden and Haynes and Boone discussed those cases in a recent panel hosted by The Texas Lawbook.
Jing Bian ‘Proves that Nice People Can Finish First’
International corporate mergers often hinge on the meaning of a single term or the interpretation of a response. Enter Energy Transfer senior counsel Jing Bian, a Chinese-born, Harvard Law-educated M&A lawyer used her knowledge of Chinese culture and fluency in Mandarin to help guide the pipeline giant through a crucial joint venture. Citing Bian’s extraordinary success in less than two years in-house, Jing Bian is the 2020 Houston Corporate Counsel Awards Rookie of the Year.
Veronica Foley Is Precision Drilling’s ‘Key to Success’
Veronica Foley was five when her grandfather, a lawyer in Columbia, was assassinated for being a political activist. The family lived in constant fear. She took different routes to school daily. Nearly four decades later, Foley is the general counsel at Precision Drilling. She and lawyers at Norton Rose Fulbright last year won a heated 8-year FLSA battle that could have been devastating for the Houston company. Foley and the law firm are the recipients of the 2020 Houston Corporate Counsel Business Litigation of the Year Award. The Texas Lawbook has the exclusive inside story.
GC Leanne Oliver’s Long and Winding Road to Law and Corporate America
Leanne Oliver could write the ultimate guide to girls about growing up. She lived in hippie communes, an old blue-green school bus, in the woods of North Idaho, in a 100-year-old log cabin and then back on the old school bus. That was just in elementary school. Today, Oliver is the GC of PepsiCo Foods North America and one of the most influential voices in the Texas corporate law community. She has a story to tell and she tells it to The Texas Lawbook.