For the fifth time since 2012, Dallas attorney and former Texas Supreme Court Justice Deborah Hankinson has earned recognition by Texas Super Lawyers as one of the Top Three attorneys in the state.

In addition to practice-specific recognition, Super Lawyers annually awards supplemental honors to the state’s top attorneys regardless of practice focus based on peer feedback. Hankinson, whose practice focuses on alternative dispute resolution and related services, was the second-highest rated attorney in the 2019 listing.

Hankinson also was selected among the Top 50 Women and Top 100 Dallas-Fort Worth attorneys in the recently released publication. She has been recognized on the Texas Super Lawyers list every year since its inaugural 2003 publication.

Texas Super Lawyers selections are based on peer nominations and evaluations, as well as independent editorial research. No more than 5 percent of eligible Texas attorneys are chosen each year for practice-specific recognition. The full 2019 listing will appear in Texas Monthly and in the Texas edition of Super Lawyers magazine.

Since re-entering private practice in 2002 following her tenure on the Supreme Court, she has garnered wide-ranging professional recognition for her ADR work from legal guides and business publications, including Chambers USA, Benchmark Appellate, The National Law Journal, Texas Lawyer, Dallas Business Journal, D Magazine, the Dallas Bar Association and Lawdragon. She also recently was recognized for a 13th time in The Best Lawyers in America guide.

Dallas attorneys Clayton Bailey and Alex Brauer, co-founders of Bailey Brauer, have been selected among the state’s top business litigators in the 2019 edition of the Texas Super Lawyers legal guide.

One of The National Trial Lawyers’ Top 100 Texas Civil Plaintiff Lawyers, Bailey has a national trial and appellate practice. He represents clients involved in complex tort and other commercial cases, corporate litigation and in putative class actions and mass action lawsuits in federal and state courts. A frequent author, he contributed to sections of the American Bar Association’s recently released Agriculture and Food Handbook. This is his ninth Texas Super Lawyers selection.

In a release, the firm said Brauer represents companies and high net worth individuals involved in high-stakes business litigation involving claims of fraud, tortious interference, breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty, conspiracy, deceptive trade practices, trade secret theft, RICO, and antitrust violations. Brauer has successfully defended clients facing class and collective actions and represented plaintiffs and defendants in complex tort and negligence cases. The 2019 selection is the third for Brauer.

Texas Super Lawyers is published by Thomson Reuters, appearing in Texas Monthly and Super Lawyers magazines. Selection is limited to no more than 5 percent of Texas attorneys and is based on a statewide survey of lawyers and extensive editorial review.

Trial lawyer David Bissinger, a founder of Houston-based Bissinger, Oshman & Williams LLP, has been selected for an 11th consecutive year to the Texas Super Lawyers list.

Bissinger was recognized in the annual legal guide for his work involving complex commercial disputes. The honor is particularly significant, he said, because of Houston’s reputation, history, and culture of outstanding courtroom advocacy.

“Texas has some of the best trial lawyers in the world. It is an honor to be on this list,” he said.

Bissinger represents clients in energy and technology matters, securities and corporate fiduciary litigation, executive compensation, banking, and real estate. He has substantial first-chair jury trial and complex arbitration experience for both plaintiffs and defendants.

Earlier this year, he earned a jury verdict securing all the damages his client sought in a dispute with a commercial landlord. Also, in recent months, he has helped his clients win significant settlements in two large-scale international matters, one for a plaintiff in a wide-ranging trade secret case, and the other for the defendant in a multifaceted corporate dispute spanning three continents.

Beyond his work as an advocate, Bissinger has served as an arbitrator in multiple commercial disputes and has published articles on trial advocacy and substantive topics in commercial law.

A former chairman of the Houston Bar Association’s Securities Litigation and Arbitration Section, Bissinger is AV-rated “Preeminent” by Martindale-Hubbell, the organization’s highest peer rating for legal skills and ethics. He earned his law degree from Vanderbilt Law School, where he served as Editor in Chief of the Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, and his undergraduate degree from the University of Iowa, where he was Phi Beta Kappa.

Texas Super Lawyers is published annually by Thomson Reuters in Texas Monthly and Super Lawyers magazines. Selection is based on a statewide survey of lawyers and extensive editorial review.

Freeborn & Peters LLP announced that Shelly A. DeRousse, a Chicago partner and co-leader of the firm’s Bankruptcy and Financial Restructuring Practice Group, is among the honorees of the 2019 Women, Influence & Power in Law (WIPL) Awards presented by Corporate Counsel and InsideCounsel magazines.

Formerly known as the National Women in Law Awards, the WIPL Awards honor general counsel, in-house leaders and law firm partners who have demonstrated a commitment to advancing the empowerment of women in law. According to Corporate Counsel and InsideCounsel, “These women are business strategists, complex problem-solvers, and of course, great lawyers. But what particularly makes these women stand out is their personal dedication to the promotion of diversity in the legal industry. These are women championing women.”

The honorees will be formally recognized at an awards dinner Oct. 16 as part of the Women, Influence & Power in Law Conference in Washington, D.C. Profiles of the honorees will be published in the December issue of Corporate Counsel magazine.

DeRousse is a restructuring attorney and commercial litigator and one of a handful of women in the United States to lead a bankruptcy and financial restructuring practice group at a law firm. DeRousse has experience representing official committees of unsecured creditors in middle market chapter 11 cases.

Since 2016, DeRousse has served as president of the Women’s Bar Foundation (WBF) of Illinois, a non‐profit organization that supports the advancement of women in the legal profession by raising money and awarding scholarships to women in each of the nine law schools in Illinois. During her tenure as president, the WBF has awarded hundreds of thousands of dollars in scholarships to women law students. She also has served on the WBF board for about 15 years.

In addition, DeRousse serves as co-chair of the Breakfast Program Committee and serves on the Network of Women Committee for the Turnaround Management Association for the Midwest Region. In this role, she plans and runs events designed to create connections among professionals in turnaround management. In 2018, she was elected as a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation and was one of six U.S. women finalists for the distinguished Chambers award for “Inspiring Role Model in Promoting Gender Diversity in the Legal Profession.” She has also been recognized by Crain’s Business Chicago on its lists of Notable Women Lawyers and Notable Gen X Leaders in Law.

At Freeborn, DeRousse is the partner chair of the firm’s Women’s Leadership Counsel, through which she organizes mentoring, educational and social programs and events for the women attorneys at the firm. She also supervises and mentors the women attorneys who belong to the Bankruptcy and Financial Restructuring Practice Group and advocates for women at the firm as a whole and for policies that support women. DeRousse’s Bankruptcy and Financial Restructuring team has the highest percentage of women of all of Freeborn’s practice groups.

DeRousse received her J.D. from DePaul University College of Law and her Bachelor of Science from Illinois State University.

The Legal 500 United States 2019 Guide recognized nine attorneys resident in the Texas offices of global law firm Greenberg Traurig, LLP.

Those recognized are:

Christopher L. Bell (Houston) – Environmental Litigation; Environmental Regulatory
Joseph F. Coniglio (Dallas) – Healthcare: Service Providers; Healthcare: Health Insurers
Karl G. Dial (Dallas) – Dispute Resolution: Securities Litigation – Defense
William Garner (Houston) – Energy Transactions: Oil & Gas; Energy Regulation: Conventional Power
Shari L. Heyen (Houston) – Finance: Restructuring (including Bankruptcy) – Corporate
Michael L. Malone (Dallas) – Healthcare: Service Providers
Dwayne L. Mason (Houston) – Intellectual Property: Trade Secrets (Litigation and Non-Contentious Matters)
Alicia Sienne Voltmer (Dallas) – Labor and Employment: Labor – Management Relations; Disputes (including Collective Actions) – Defense; Workplace and Employment Counseling
Dale Wainwright (Austin) – Dispute Resolution: Appellate

Read more about the honors.

SmartAsset has published the results of a study designed to rank states from best to worst to practice law.

Criteria include the number of lawyers per 1,000 workers, average annual income, five-year earnings and job growth, median home value and the percentage of law offices relative to total establishments.

Illinois tops the list, with Idaho and Maine tied at the bottom. Delaware and North Dakota were excluded because of insufficient data.

In 2018, Illinois lawyers earned an average of $152,980, according to the study. The average for Idaho was $99,360.

Read the SmartAsset article.

Alex Purvis, a partner in Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP’s Jackson, Miss., office, has been accepted as a Fellow in the American College of Coverage Counsel (ACCC).

In a release, the firm said the ACCC engages in a rigorous vetting process prior to inviting a lawyer to become a Fellow. Its Fellows include many of the most prominent members of the insurance law bar.

A member of Bradley’s Litigation and Insurance practice groups, Purvis is a litigator and policyholder coverage lawyer whose background includes experience in product liability, construction and complex commercial litigation.

The firm said the ACCC is the preeminent association of U.S. and Canadian lawyers who represent the interests of insurers and policyholders. The ACCC focuses on educating all sectors involved in the field of insurance law – including the judiciary, legal and insurance professionals, law students, and businesses – on cutting edge, emerging and critical issues such as developing trends in insurance law and bad faith, trial practice and alternative dispute resolution, policy formation, and claims handling.

The Legal 500 United States 2019 Guide recognized nine attorneys resident in the Texas offices of global law firm Greenberg Traurig, LLP.

• Christopher L. Bell (Houston) – Environmental Litigation; Environmental Regulatory
• Joseph F. Coniglio (Dallas) – Healthcare: Service Providers; Healthcare: Health Insurers
• Karl G. Dial (Dallas) – Dispute Resolution: Securities Litigation – Defense
• William Garner (Houston) – Energy Transactions: Oil & Gas; Energy Regulation: Conventional Power
• Shari L. Heyen (Houston) – Finance: Restructuring (including Bankruptcy) – Corporate
• Michael L. Malone (Dallas) – Healthcare: Service Providers
• Dwayne L. Mason (Houston) – Intellectual Property: Trade Secrets (Litigation and Non-Contentious Matters)
• Alicia Sienne Voltmer (Dallas) – Labor and Employment: Labor – Management Relations; Disputes (including Collective Actions) – Defense; Workplace and Employment Counseling
• Dale Wainwright (Austin) – Dispute Resolution: Appellate

Read more information.

Five attorneys with personal injury and commercial litigation firm Sommerman, McCaffity, Quesada & Geisler have earned selection to the 2020 edition of The Best Lawyers in America.

Sean McCaffity made the Best Lawyers list for the first time based on his work in bankruptcy and creditor-debtor rights as well as insolvency and reorganization law. Andrew B. Sommerman, George (Tex) Quesada, Laura Benitez Geisler and Al Ellis, of counsel, earned honors for their personal injury litigation work for plaintiffs. Mr. Sommerman earned additional recognition for his work in commercial litigation.

The Best Lawyers in America annual legal guide selects leading lawyers in various practice areas based on peer evaluations submitted by lawyers nationwide. The complete 2020 Best Lawyers in America edition is available online at http://bestlawyers.com.

The Dallas-based firm works in personal injury and commercial litigation, with attorneys having earned professional honors from notable legal industry ranking services, such as Texas Super Lawyers and Best Law Firms. The legal team has more than 100 years of combined legal experience, the firm said in a release.

Three Provost Umphrey attorneys have been named Lawyer of the Year for their respective practice groups and geographic region as part of the Best Lawyers in America 2020 honors.

Equity partner Bryan O. Blevins Jr. earned this distinction for his work with mass tort litigation and class actions on behalf of plaintiffs, with additional honors for plaintiffs’ personal injury and product liability litigation. Equity partner David P. Wilson also earned Lawyer of the Year honors for his work in personal injury litigation with plaintiffs. Attorney Darren L. Brown received Lawyer of the Year recognition for plaintiffs’ product liability litigation, with additional recognition for plaintiffs’ personal injury litigation. The attorneys are based in Beaumont, Texas.

For a fifth consecutive year, all of Provost Umphrey’s equity partners earned placement to the Best Lawyers in America listing. Edward Fisher, Joe J. Fisher II, D’Juana Parks, and James E. Payne received honors for their work with plaintiffs in personal injury litigation and product liability litigation. Joe Fisher earned additional recognition for his mass tort and class actions litigation work on behalf of plaintiffs.

Additional Provost Umphrey attorneys honored by Best Lawyers in 2020 for their plaintiffs’ litigation work include:

Guy G. Fisher: Product Liability
W. Michael Hamilton: Labor and Employment
J. Keith Hyde: Personal injury and Product Liability
Christopher T. Kirchmer: Mass torts, Class Actions, Personal Injury and Product Liability
Matthew C. Matheny: Mass Torts, Class Actions and Personal Injury
Colin D. Moore: Personal Injury and Product Liability
Ronnie Turner Jr.: Personal Injury and Product Liability

The firm also received special recognition in the “Top-Listed Awards” for having more recognized lawyers than any other firm in Texas in plaintiffs’ personal injury litigation, product liability litigation and mass tort litigation/class actions.

The Best Lawyers in America is recognized as one of the leading guides to the U.S. legal profession. Surveys from tens of thousands of attorneys nationwide are used to compile the rankings of the nation’s top lawyers in various practice areas.

Insurance coverage and litigation attorney Meloney Perry has earned a place in the 2020 edition of The Best Lawyers in America for her work in insurance law and insurance litigation.

The nation’s oldest peer-review guide has recognized the Dallas attorney and founder of Perry Law P.C. for a second consecutive year. Perry is an insurance lawyer who serves as the primary regional attorney for a major national insurance carrier. She also represents companies involved in insurance and business disputes throughout Texas, New Mexico and Colorado.

Perry is a frequent presenter at legal seminars that focus on insurance coverage, bad faith matters and the law and has taken a leadership role within the State Bar of Texas. She is the immediate past vice chair of the Council of Chairs Committee and is a former chair of the Insurance Law Section.

The Best Lawyers in America is a legal guide developed through a process of independent nominations followed with voting by current Best Lawyers honorees in the same practice areas and geographic regions. Editors make the final selection after careful review.

Thirteen lawyers with Texas-based family law firm Orsinger, Nelson, Downing & Anderson, LLP, earned selection to the 2020 edition of Best Lawyers in America, the nation’s oldest peer-review guide to the legal profession.

Name partners Richard R. Orsinger, Keith M. Nelson, R. Scott Downing and Jeff O. Anderson were recognized for their work in family law. Orsinger also earned honors for his appellate work. Anderson earned additional recognition for his family law arbitration practice.

Also earning family law recognition are partners William M. Reppeto III, Brad M. LaMorgese, Amber Liddell Alwais, Paula A. Bennett, Lon M. Loveless, Paul Hewett, Chris Oldner, Holly Rampy Baird, and of counsel James M. Loveless. LaMorgese earned additional honors for his appellate practice, and Bennett also was recognized for her family law mediation work.

Trial lawyer David Bissinger, a founder of Houston-based Bissinger, Oshman & Williams LLP, earned recognition for his commercial litigation work in the 2020 listing of The Best Lawyers in America, the oldest U.S.-based legal guide.

In a release, the firm said Bissinger represents plaintiffs and defendants in jury trials and complex commercial arbitrations involving securities, corporate fiduciary, energy, technology, executive compensation, banking, and real estate disputes.

A former chairman of the Houston Bar Association’s Securities Litigation and Arbitration Section, Bissinger has been recognized on the Texas Super Lawyers list each year since 2009 and is AV-rated Preeminent by Martindale-Hubbell, the organization’s highest peer rating for legal skills and ethics. He also made the listing America’s Top 100 High Stakes Litigators for 2019. Drawing on his experience in the courtroom, he is a frequent writer and speaker on legal issues. His practice also includes work as an arbitrator in numerous commercial disputes.

As the oldest peer-review attorney guide in the country, Best Lawyers is also one of the most respected. Selection is based upon a comprehensive review of nominees by lawyers within the same geographical region who share a practice focus, with final selections made by the Best Lawyers research team.

Sommerman, McCaffity, Quesada & Geisler name partner Laura Benitez Geisler will serve as the honorary chair of the Denim & Diamonds event, organized by the Legal Hospice of Texas, an organization that provides timely and compassionate legal services to low-income residents living with HIV or other terminal illnesses.

The event will take place Sept. 7 at Gilley’s Dallas with casino games, a silent auction, food and beverages.

“Every person deserves access to legal representation and the work that is done by Legal Hospice of Texas is important to help serve the needs of people facing the extraordinary challenge of fighting terminal illness,” said Ms. Geisler. “I’m excited to be a part of this event, and I’m excited to raise awareness of this group’s mission.”

In a release, the firm said trial attorney Geisler, who represents people in wrongful death and personal injury cases, is also the current president of the Dallas Bar Association. Throughout her career, she has devoted considerable time to programs seeking to provide access to justice for low-income Dallas County residents, including raising more than $1 million as a co-chair for the Equal Access to Justice Campaign, which benefits the Dallas Volunteer Attorney Program, the firm said.

“We are honored to have Laura as our honorary chair for this year’s Denim & Diamonds event,” said Kimberly Gonzalez, who serves on the Board of Directors for Legal Hospice of Texas. “We share the same commitment to serving people in our community.”

Legal Hospice of Texas has provided legal counsel, representation and advocacy since 1989. The organization helped 889 people in North Texas in 2018 and volunteers provided more than 2,300 hours of legal work. Volunteers include attorneys and paraprofessionals who donate legal services.

Trial lawyer Jeffrey Rasansky of Rasansky Law Firm in Dallas has been recognized as one of the 500 Leading Plaintiff Consumer Lawyers in the country for 2019 by the legal media guide Lawdragon.

Each year, the Lawdragon 500 guide honors the best of the U.S. plaintiff bar.

In a release, the firm said Rasansky has represented victims of vehicle crashes; medical malpractice, including children who have suffered catastrophic birth injuries; defective products; and nursing home neglect.

“It’s an honor to be among this esteemed group of plaintiff consumer lawyers,” said Rasansky. “Our whole team works hard every day to deliver an unmatched level of personal attention to holding accountable those responsible for our clients’ pain and suffering. Doing what is right for them is what drives my passion for the law.”

Lawdragon 500 Leading Plaintiff Consumer Lawyers’ list is developed by researching top verdicts and settlements and through interviews conducted with other attorneys nationwide. These lawyers recommend those peers who they admire and would hire in a personal legal matter.

Trial attorneys Bryan Fears and Majed Nachawati, co-founding partners of Fears Nachawati Law Firm, have earned selection to the 2020 edition of The Best Lawyers in America.

Fears was selected for work involving bankruptcy and creditor debtor rights/insolvency and reorganization law. Nachawati was recognized for his work on behalf of plaintiffs in personal injury litigation. It is the first Best Lawyers listing for each.

In a release, the firm said Fears has expanded his practice to focus on mass torts involving water contamination by PFOA and PFOS chemical compounds.

Nachawati represents individuals, businesses and public and private entities in mass torts and other high-stakes litigation, including state, city and county representation against opioid manufacturers, distributors, and retailers. He is a member of the State Bar of Texas Professionalism Committee, Dallas Bar Association’s Legal Ethics Committee, the Public Justice Board of Directors, the Texas Trial Lawyers Association Board of Directors, and is a Leader’s Forum member of the American Association for Justice.

Dallas litigation boutique Bailey Brauer co-founders Clayton Bailey and Alex Brauer have earned selection to the 2020 edition of The Best Lawyers in America based on their commercial litigation work. Bailey earned additional recognition for his appellate practice from Best Lawyers, one of the most respected U.S.-based attorney guides.

In a release, the firm said Bailey is nationally known for his trial and appellate practice in complex tort and other commercial cases in federal and state courts. He has been honored as one of The National Trial Lawyers’ Top 100 Texas Civil Plaintiff Lawyers. He represents clients in corporate litigation as well as in putative class actions and mass action lawsuits. Bailey also contributed significant expertise to sections of the ABA’s recently released Agriculture and Food Handbook.

The firm said Brauer represents companies and high net worth individuals involved in high-stakes business litigation across a wide range of industries. He focuses on disputes involving claims of fraud, tortious interference, breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty, conspiracy, deceptive trade practices, trade secret theft, RICO, and antitrust violations. Brauer has successfully defended clients facing class and collective actions and represented plaintiffs and defendants in complex tort and negligence cases.

The profession’s oldest U.S. peer-review guide, The Best Lawyers in America is also among the most respected. Selection is based on confidential evaluations by attorneys in the same practice area and from the same geographic region.

In addition to The Best Lawyers in America, the firm and its individual lawyers have earned honors from BTI Consulting Group, Benchmark Litigation, Chambers USA, the National Law Journal, Texas Super Lawyers and D Magazine since the firm opened in 2013.

Farrell Fritz announced that 10 attorneys were selected by their peers for inclusion in The Best Lawyers in America 2020.

The attorneys and the fields in which they are being recognized are: Martin (Marty) G. Bunin (Bankruptcy and Creditor Debtor Rights/Insolvency and Reorganization Law and Litigation – Bankruptcy); John (Jack) Barnosky and Ilene Sherwyn Cooper (Litigation – Trusts & Estates and Trusts & Estates); Brian Corrigan, John R. Morken and Eric W. Penzer (Litigation – Trusts & Estates); Domenique Camacho Moran (Employment Law – Management); Jason S. Samuels (Litigation – Construction); Robert E. Sandler (Real Estate Law); Charles M. Strain (Health Care Law).

Jack Barnosky and Robert Sandler received the “Lawyer of the Year” award for Long Island. This recognition is awarded to individual attorneys with the highest overall peer-feedback for a specific practice area and geographic location.

Best Lawyers is the oldest and most respected peer review publication in the legal profession, the firm said in a release. A listing in Best Lawyers© is widely regarded by legal professionals as a significant honor, conferred on a lawyer by his or her peers.

Dykema announced that 119 of its attorneys, in multiple practice areas and markets, have been recognized in The Best Lawyers in America 2020 guide.

Additionally, 18 of the firm’s practitioners have been named Best Lawyers 2020 “Lawyer of the Year,” a special distinction conferred upon a single lawyer within a practice area and metropolitan market.

The Best Lawyers in America is the pre-eminent national listing of outstanding attorneys. This annual guide is derived from exhaustive peer-review surveys in which thousands of leading lawyers confidentially evaluate their professional peers.

Kevin Shepherd, a partner in Venable LLP’s Real Estate Practice Group in the Baltimore office, has been elected to serve as treasurer of the American Bar Association (ABA).

Shepherd was elected by the ABA House of Delegates during the ABA’s annual meeting on August 13. He will serve as the treasurer-elect in 2019-2020 and as treasurer for the 2020-2023 term. Shepherd currently serves as chair of the ABA Board of Governors’ Finance Committee and will continue in that role for the 2019-2020 bar year. Shepherd will be one of only a few to serve simultaneously as chair of the Finance Committee and as treasurer-elect.

The treasurer is one of the five elected officers of the ABA, along with the president, president-elect, chair of the House of Delegates, and secretary. Shepherd is the first Venable attorney to serve as an elected officer of the ABA, and is only the third Maryland attorney to serve as an elected officer of the ABA in nearly a century.

At Venable, Shepherd works with U.S. and global institutions in complex real estate transactions, the firm said. He is also managing director of finance and chair of Venable’s Finance Committee, which oversees the firm’s financial operations, policies, and procedures.

Founded in 1878, the ABA is committed to advancing the rule of law across the United States and beyond by providing practical resources for legal professionals, law school accreditation, model ethics codes, and more. The ABA has more than 400,000 members, is one of the world’s largest voluntary professional organizations, and is the world’s largest bar association.