Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury
The chief legal officers at Adeptus Health, EnLink Midstream Partners and Match.com won General Counsel of the Year awards. Senior counsel at Southern Glazer’s Wine and Spirits, Capital One and NGP Energy also were honored for significant successes during 2018. The Texas Lawbook has exclusive details.
Five years ago, Sandra Phillips Rogers started an effort to analyze and revamp how the auto giant’s corporate legal department selected and worked with outside counsel. The idea was a more collaborative relationship between Toyota’s in-house counsel and its outside counsel. Today that idea is more than a success: it’s a model for cooperation and diversity.
Jared Sine has never swiped right on Tinder, but he is making all the right legal moves for Match.com. In his 30 months as GC, Sine has tripled the size of the Match legal department, unveiled a major data privacy effort and successfully litigated a patent infringement claim against a competitor. The Texas Lawbook tells what Sine then did after lunch.
A couple years ago, Kelly Rentzel faced a daunting question: whether to disclose a mental illness to the world. The GC of Texas Capital Bank had known days of darkness stemming from her struggle with bipolar disorder. But in the process she has discovered that the public revelation of that struggle has meant as much to others as it has to her.
When complex deals become contentious – with emails flying and obstacles accruing and the transaction in danger of falling apart – Shruti Krishnan is likely to do something unusual: she picks up the phone and talks with opposing counsel. And now, as a top lawyer at Table Top, she is known as one of the most effective and personable dealmakers around.
Kate Nanney had been practicing law merely three years and was corporate counsel at Bedford-based State National Companies for only a few months when she was given a new assignment: work with some of the most experienced M&A lawyers in the world at Skadden Arps on a transaction to sell the company to a mega-insurance and investment firm for $919 million.
You would think a merger between two affiliated entities would be easy to pull off. Not so with Energy Transfer Equity’s purchase of Energy Transfer Partners, which is a finalist for the 2018 M&A Deal of the Year award by the Dallas/Fort Worth chapter of the Association of Corporate Counsel.
When Mauri Miller arrived at Platinum Dermatology Partners in May 2016, the business had three offices and 16 providers in Texas. Fifteen transactions later, Platinum has 33 offices and 83 providers in multiple states. Miller, who is 31, oversees Platinum’s M&A and has been integrally involved in each deal.
During his four years at Summit, GC Daniel Gerber has handled five M&A deals, drafted hundreds of contracts and agreements, updated the privacy guidelines and procedures and helped the company avoid potentially costly litigation. Summit CEO Dale Young says, “Daniel’s execution makes visions become a reality."
As lead labor and employment counsel at Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits, Lauren Mutti handles everything from a $9 million litigation docket to sales compliance policies nationwide. She describes herself as the daughter of a "corporate gypsy," but others describe her as a community-committed lawyer who is terrific at her job.
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