Senior Writer for The Texas Lawbook
(January 2) – Two years ago, The Texas Lawbook was a brand new publication focusing on the practice of business law. We had no subscribers, no advertisers and only a couple dozen articles on our website.
When our writers called lawyers for an interview, the response was mostly the same: The Texas what?
Much has changed in two years. The Texas Lawbook now has 4,900 paid subscribers – about 1,200 of them corporate in-house counsel. More than 50 law firms and a dozen corporate in-house legal departments purchased group subscriptions for all of their lawyers. We are thankful to have Erickson Partners as a Premium Advertiser.
Our articles are regularly published in The Dallas Morning News and the Houston Chronicle. We have partnerships with amazing organizations including the General Counsel Forum and mergermarket media.
The Texas Lawbook has become the authoritative voice on business litigation, regulatory and corporate transactional matters.
Consider this:
• Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Wallace Jefferson gave The Texas Lawbook the exclusive story when he decided to resign;
• Texas Supreme Court Justice Nathan Hecht gave The Texas Lawbook the exclusive when he decided he wanted to be the next chief justice;
• U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison gave The Texas Lawbook the exclusive when she joined Bracewell & Giuliani;
• U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk gave The Texas Lawbook the exclusive when he joined Gibson Dunn; and
• American Airlines General Counsel Gary Kennedy gave The Texas Lawbook multiple exclusive interviews providing insight into AA’s merger with US Airways and the antitrust litigation battle with the U.S. Department of Justice.
The Texas Lawbook has published groundbreaking articles on the decline in civil jury trials, the extraordinary life and career of Jim Coleman, the evolving role of the general counsel, and inside peaks at some of the most complex business transactions in Texas.
As you know, Mark Cuban and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission officials don’t agree on much, but both stated publicly that The Texas Lawbook’s coverage of Cuban’s insider trading trial was head-and-shoulders above the competition, which included the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Bloomberg and Law360.
We are just getting started.
The Texas Lawbook is adding some prominent journalists to our team of writers. This fall, we added the premier technology law and intellectual property law writer in Texas, Jeff Bounds, to our ranks. Jeff was previously with the Dallas Business Journal. And we will be announcing more additions in the weeks ahead.
At the end of the day, our subscribers want substantive content that they cannot get elsewhere. You will not be disappointed in the year ahead because we have some extraordinary projects we will be publishing in 2014.
For example, The Texas Lawbook will take an in-depth examination of energy M&A in Texas next week. We will showcase the 25 law firms and investment banks that are doing the most and biggest oil and gas deals. We will have insight from prominent energy company general counsels and leading energy transactional lawyers.
In two weeks, The Texas Lawbook will publish the first ever in-depth profile of Chief Judge Carl Stewart of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. We spent three days with Chief Judge Stewart and interviewed five other Fifth Circuit judges about the region’s most powerful court. The article will be a must read for appellate lawyers and those with a federal court practice.
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s Fort Worth Regional Office Director David Woodcock is writing an exclusive article for The Texas Lawbook that documents his two years as the region’s top securities fraud cop and what he and his team of securities enforcement officers and examiners have planned for 2014.
Later this month, The Texas Lawbook will unveil a groundbreaking study and report on binding mandatory arbitration and the surprising growing discontent with arbitration by an increasing number of corporate general counsel.
And feature writer Patricia Baldwin, who has the great article today about Texas lawyers playing high-stakes poker, is working on a series of articles about corporate in-house lawyers working with outside counsel on pro bono projects.
Finally, The Texas Lawbook is creating an editorial advisory board consisting of corporate in-house lawyers, partners at large and small law firms, judges and legal educators across Texas. The advisory board members will provide us with insights into legal trends and developments. This is another effort by The Texas Lawbook to produce unique and substantive content that you, our readers, want and need.
But our most important resource is you. Our subscribers are influential leaders involved in the most important M&A transactions and the biggest business lawsuits. We ask that you keep us in mind when you see or hear about good story ideas.
Thank you for your support and we wish you a wonderful 2014.