Texas Lawyer Blog

Terry Tottenham wins State Bar president-elect race

The State Bar of Texas has elected as its next president-elect an Austin attorney whose goals include providing high-quality, cost-effective continuing legal education to lawyers struggling in the current economic hard times. State Bar officials announced late today that Terry Tottenham (pictured) defeated Dallas attorney Rhonda Hunter for the post. Tottenham is the partner-in-charge of Fulbright & Jaworski’s Austin office and head of the firm’s pharmaceutical and medical device litigation group.  He will serve as State Bar president from June 2010 until June 2011.  Tottenham and Hunter did not immediately return telephone calls seeking comment. The State Bar also announced the election of the following to the Bar board of directors: Mark G. Daniel of Fort Worth; Allan K. DuBois of San Antonio; and Travis J. Sales, Damon D. Edwards and Bethew “Bert” Jennings III of Houston.
-- Mary Alice Robbins

Houston in top five most likely terrorist-target metro areas, speaker says

Congress considers Houston one of the five metropolitan areas in the United States most likely to be targeted by terrorists, says James G. Conway, president of Global Intelligence Strategies Inc. in Houston. The other four cities are Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and Washington, D.C., Conway told a group of business executives and lawyers Thursday during the first day of a two-day conference on terrorism, crime and business. When it comes to terrorist groups, “the economy is their target,” he says. Conway’s comments were similar to those made earlier in the conference. But he defined even more reasons for Houston’s special appeal. The Federal Bureau of Investigation and U.S. Department of Homeland Security have identified nine traits that make a target particularly attractive to terrorists, such as areas with oil and gas facilities, transportation and energy centers, banking and finance hubs, and water supplies, Conway says. “Houston is the only city in the U.S. with all nine [traits],” he says. Conway also says that the Congressional Research Service has identified Houston as one of three urban areas -- the others are Los Angeles and Newark, N.J. -- that have large chemical plants with toxic and flammable chemicals close to major population centers. The conference, which continues Friday, is sponsored by San Antonio’s St. Mary’s University School of Law Center for Terrorism Law and is being held at the Houston branch of the Federal Reserve Bank.
-- Jeanne Graham

Texas Wesleyan School of Law: No swine flu reprieve yet from final exams

Very little can stop law school final exams, not even a flu outbreak -- at least not yet. Texas Wesleyan School of Law Dean Frederic White (pictured) assures students in an online announcement that the “law school has no current plans to cancel final examinations.” Classes at the downtown Fort Worth law school ended on Tuesday, and finals are scheduled to start Monday, May 4. In White’s announcement, he encourages students to take the precautions recommended by health care authorities, to study at home, and only to go to the law school for exams. The dean also instructed students to disinfect their laptops, including cords and keyboards before taking them into the law school building. As he note, Texas Wesleyan’s finals rescheduling procedure is “fairly strict,” but the procedures may be relaxed “in the proper circumstances.”
-- Renea Overstreet

Judge with 220 Gitmo habeas petitions to speak in San Antonio

If Law Day seems like a good time to think about the balance of power between the executive and judicial branches regarding the Guantánamo Bay cases, San Antonio is the place to be. The Alamo City's bar association has invited U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth to speak at a luncheon to celebrate Law Day on May 1. Lamberth presides over the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, where some 220 Gitmo inmates' habeas corpus petitions have landed, according to Tex Parte's affiliate blog The BLT. He's a San Antonio native and University of Texas School of Law graduate, who was appointed to the bench by then-President Ronald Reagan in November 1987.
-- Miriam Rozen

Law Day. May Day. Time for lunch with the FBI.

Tomorrow at noon, the Dallas Bar Association will host its annual Law Day Luncheon at the Belo Mansion in downtown Dallas. The keynote speaker is Valerie Caproni, general counsel for the Federal Bureau of Investigations. And the theme this year is the celebration of the birth of the best lawyer president yet from Illinois (No, not you Barack Obama; you may get your day): Abraham Lincoln, who’d be 200 years old this week if he hadn’t been assassinated in 1865. President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1958 first designated May 1 as a day to honor our country’s rule of law. That replaced the occasionally celebrated May Day, which in my childhood had something to do with making of May baskets filled with flowers or gifts and left on people’s doorsteps. “The basket giver would ring the bell and run away,” according to Wikipedia. “The person receiving the basket would try to catch the fleeing giver. If they caught the person, a kiss was to be exchanged.” In my day, we called May Day “ding dong, ditch.”
-- John Council

Houston port shutdown? Losses of $400 million per day.

$140 million in federal grants received by the Port Authority of Houston since 2003 have funded security improvements, including expanded fiber optics, cameras, sensors and sonar systems to sweep under docks, says Wade Battles, acting executive director of the Port of Houston Authority. Battles was a keynote speaker during lunch today at St. Mary's University School of Law Symposium on Terrorism, Crime and Business, held at the Houston branch of the Federal Reserve Bank. The Houston port is the largest in the United States in terms of foreign tonnage, and it's home to large chemical plant facilities, he says. If the port was shut down, it would lose $400 million a day, he notes. Battles says the U.S. Department of Homeland Security considers the port one of the country's most attractive to terrorists because of its size and its facilities. "In Houston, we're mindful of the potential for a chemical plant or small boat attack," he says. He notes that during the 2007 legislative session, Texas lawmakers approved creation of a Houston Channel Security District, which is a public-private group authorized to look at security issues along the channel; the group is currently updating the security procedures implemented in 2003.
-- Jeanne Graham

Student awards to highlight State Bar’s Law Day observance

Harper Estes (pictured, left), president of the State Bar of Texas, and Roland Johnson (pictured, right), the Bar’s president-elect, will present awards to students selected as winners of the annual Law Day contest during an 11:30 a.m. Friday ceremony in the Texas Law Center. Students will receive awards and prizes ranging from $50 to $1,000 in editorial, photography and poster contests. Estes, a shareholder in Lynch, Chappell & Alsup in Midland, says the competition begins early in the year in school districts around the state as part of the State Bar’s law-related education initiative. Through that initiative, the Bar tries to get students interested in the law and also to educate them on this country’s constitutional form of government and how the rule of law impacts their daily lives. Following the awards ceremony, the Bar will host a luncheon for the student award winners.
-- Mary Alice Robbins

Law Day photos with Lincoln in Lubbock

  Abe Lincoln will be joining Lubbock lawyers Friday for the Lubbock Country Bar Association’s annual Law Day banquet, says Michael D. Wysocki (pictured), an associate with Mullin Hoard & Brown in Lubbock and chairman of the event. The Lubbock Bar is bringing in a Springfield, Ill.-based actor named Fritz Klein, who is known for his President Abraham Lincoln presentations, to be the featured speaker at the banquet. Those attending also will be able to have their photos taken with Klein/Lincoln, Wysocki says. Klein “looks so much like him,” Wysocki says. The actor "seems like the real deal.” The 7 p.m. banquet will be at the Lubbock Country Club, and there will be door prizes and a silent auction, Wysocki says. Klein is on school duty today, visiting with Lubbock students at Crestview, Willow Bend and Roscoe Wilson elementary schools. Wysocki notes that the majority of Lubbock’s firms have contributed donations totaling $6,450 to support local Law Day activities. “I want every law firm in town to participate,” he says. “And so, even if you give $10, you can contribute to Abe Lincoln going to the schools.”
-- Jeanne Graham

Former justices of nation's, state's highest courts in Austin

When former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor visited the Texas Senate today, a former chief justice of the state Supreme Court was in her entourage. Tom Phillips, now a partner in Baker Botts in Austin, was among those escorting O’Connor around the Capitol and Austin, including a visit to the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum. O’Connor, who stepped down from the nation’s highest court in 2006, is a Texas native. During her stopover in the Senate, O’Connor made a plea with regard to Alzheimer’s, the disease which has afflicted her husband, John. As reported by The Quorum Report, O’Connor told state senators, “We need a national focus on this disease. And we need the cooperation here at the state level.”  
-- Mary Alice Robbins

Swine flu concerns prompt Gardere's Mexico City office to close until May 4

Alejandro Ortiz (pictured), a partner in the Dallas office of Gardere Wynne Sewell, says the firm's Mexico City office is closing due to the outbreak of swine flu in that country. Only a few staff members will come in to the office until Monday, May 4, when the firm's management will reassess, Ortiz says. Managers at the firm's Mexico City office, which is in a partnership with Gardere and does business under the name Gardere, Arena y Asociados, S.C., had already taken steps earlier in the week, Ortiz says, to address the concerns of 15 lawyers plus staff members at the office stemming from the swine-flu outbreak. The Dallas office had sent down extra face masks and hand sanitizer, recommended by some health authorities to limit further infections, Ortiz says. The office had begun offering all employees individual water bottles, disposable cups and paper towels to reduce germ spreading, as well as shutting off the air-conditioning, Ortiz says. But now management decided to close the office as well, Ortiz says, because "the nervousness continues," about the spread of the swine flu. He notes that Friday, May 1, is an official national holiday in Mexico, so the office would have been closed then, anyway. He says many of the measures were done to inspire "a sense of confidence" among employees that steps were being taken to protect their health even though debates persist about if such tactics as hand sanitizers and masks are effective. He says the firm has also created up-to-date backups of all client documents that lawyers in Mexico are working on, so lawyers in the states, if necessarily, can fill in for them, should the border close and they be limited in their travel to client meetings. He is not encouraging the Mexico City-based lawyers to leave Mexico, as some partners at other firms have done. "My guess is that clients here don't want to see their Mexican lawyers at their doors right now," he says. 
-- Miriam Rozen