Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury
Black History Month comes alive Feb. 23 with an extraordinary panel discussion in downtown Dallas. In two weeks, musicians from more than a half-dozen law firms will rock for charity. And nominations are officially open for the 2025 Houston Corporate Counsel Awards, recognizing pro bono and diversity.
Sara Garcia Duran never considered becoming a lawyer until she was asked to make a decision while on a student trip in high school. She thought about being a politician, but that option didn't sound terribly appealing. “I’ll go join the lawyers,” Duran said.
The M&A-focused partner at Sidley is pleased with her choice. Duran recently gave The Texas Lawbook an in-depth look into her journey and her experience as a woman working as a Texas dealmaker.
The spring, summer and fall of 2020 was a time of turbulence and uncertainty. The Covid-19 shutdowns meant law firm offices were closed, courts put all trials on hold and clients were struggling to survive. The media was filled with stories on the killings of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery. There was a feeling of isolation. But it was later that year that Vinson & Elkins promoted Quentin Smith to partner.
Smith has scored a handful of multimillion-dollar trial victories for clients and is currently one of the lead lawyers representing Oncor Electric Delivery and other transmission and distribution utilities in the Winter Storm Uri litigation in which 15,000 plaintiffs seek several billions of dollars in damages in wrongful death, personal injury and property damage cases. Despite his busy schedule, Smith agreed to discuss Black History Month and diversity efforts with The Texas Lawbook.
More than 400 corporate general counsel, senior in-house counsel and prominent business lawyers across North Texas celebrated the 2024 DFW Corporate Counsel Awards Thursday night at the George W. Bush Institute. The Association of Corporate Counsel’s DFW Chapter and The Texas Lawbook presented awards to 15 in-house counsel who achieved extraordinary successes during the past 18 months.
Kaleisha Stuart was the only Black lawyer working in-house for an NFL team when she joined the Dallas Cowboys legal team in 2016. “Over the years, legal departments have grown and diversified,” Stuart told The Texas Lawbook. “Noticing this trend, I decided to create a group for the Black women lawyers working at NFL teams. The goals of the group were to make Black women taking on these new roles feel immediately welcome, to have a safe, supportive outlet to share ideas or ask questions and to make new friends."
As deputy GC for the most valuable sports franchise in the world, Stuart has achieved some extraordinary successes in business, law and diversity. “I can’t think of anyone more deserving of recognition for the DFW Corporate Counsel Award for Achievement in Diversity and Inclusion than Kaleisha,” Cowboys CFO Tom Walker said. “Kaleisha’s leadership ‘off the field’ in our internal DEI initiatives has been instrumental since early in her career here, which is matched only by her success ‘on the field’ in helping guide our legal department through a period of unprecedented business growth. If you get five minutes to spend with her, you’ll understand why I feel as strongly about her recognition as I do.”
Cale Curtin's plan was to be a landman, but Chesapeake wasn’t hiring. So, he went to law school. Now, instead of negotiating with individual property owners to acquire mineral rights, Curtin is negotiating billion-dollar credit deals to acquire competitors. As such, Curtin has been recognized as a finalist for the 2024 DFW Corporate Counsel of the Year Award for Rookie of the Year.
Brennan Champion is assistant general counsel for ECI Software Solutions Inc., a provider of cloud-based business management software serving small and medium-sized enterprises. As one of two full-time lawyers at the Westlake company, he oversees a wide array of litigation and transactional matters across North America. He is praised for his can-do mentality and exceptional legal skills that often surpass those of more experienced lawyers. He has established himself as a trusted advisor within ECI, adeptly balancing legal risks while providing practical, business-focused legal advice across the company's diverse global operations. For these attributes and others, Champion has been recognized as a finalist for the 2024 DFW Corporate Counsel of the Year Award for Rookie of the Year.
In the mid-1990s, looking for “something to do in between other things,” a young Sam Prince took a job with the Dallas branch of legal services. Coming from a fundraising gig at the University of Dallas where he’d honed his development skills, the Buffalo, New York, native thought he would learn a few things about the legal nonprofit field and then move on to his next adventure. Twenty-eight years later, Prince is still adventuring with legal services (now Legal Aid of NorthWest Texas) where he’s raised more than $50 million for needy Texans.
For six weeks in 1981, three-year-old Ashley Nguyen Ahn was stranded in a small boat in the middle of the ocean with her family in an effort to flee certain execution by the Viet Cong. They ran out of food and then water. She witnessed her eight-year-old neighbor die of starvation and dehydration first. Her uncle died next and then her father, whose body she watched being pushed overboard. Ahn experienced more trauma, death and desperation as a toddler than the rest of us face in a lifetime. And she remembers it all. “All of these early events made me who I am today,” she told The Texas Lawbook in an exclusive interview. Ahn is now the associate general counsel at Texas Capital, where she and her team spent the last three years rebuilding and transforming Texas Capital into a premier financial services firm in the state. And she is a finalist for the 2024 DFW Corporate Counsel Award for Senior Counsel of the Year for a Midsized Legal Department.
Juries in the Eastern District of Texas handed out the largest and second-largest awards of the year and five of the Top 10. But no jury in the state cracked the $1 billion damages award threshold in a single case in 2024.
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