Chief Justice on Proposed Legal Aid Cuts: ‘You Can’t Just Be for the Rich Folks’

Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Nathan Hecht said it’s critical to keep funding LSC because it’s the “backbone” of support for access to justice for very poor people. Texas Lawyer interviewed Hecht about the news that LSC would lose funding under Trump’s budget. Here are his answers, edited for brevity and clarity. … Published on …

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SMU Law Professor, Students Volunteer to Help Detained Immigrants

Ever since she moved to Dallas, law professor Natalie Nanasi wanted to take students and volunteer to help immigrant mothers and children gain release from detention in South Texas. Nanasi said she took the idea off the back burner after President Donald Trump’s election. … Published on TexasLawyer.com. PDF: SMU Law Professor Students Volunteer to Help …

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Round 2 in Sanctions Fight Against Penny-Paying Lawyer

Next week, if Austin lawyer Jeff Taylor wins sanctions again from his client’s former attorney, he’ll make a point—spelled out in a proposed order—that the sanctions must be paid by check. The method of payment is important because of what happened last time defendant Jeffrey Kelly, owner of The Kelly Legal Group in Austin, lost …

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State Bar’s Executive Director Stepping Down

After 20 years working at the State Bar of Texas—the past nine as its top administrator—Michelle Hunter has announced plans to retire as executive director to spend more time with her family. Link. PDF: State Bar s Executive Director Stepping Down _ Texas Lawyer

Texas A&M Law Offers Two Online Graduate Degree Programs

Students of two new distance learning programs at Texas A&M University School of Law might be separated by cities, states or even countries—but they’ll still be bound together in their “cultish” identities as Aggies, said William Byrnes, who created the programs. Link. PDF: Texas A amp M Law Offers Two Online Graduate Degree Programs _ Texas …

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After a Tough Week, Media Scores Texas High Court Win

In contrast to the hit last week that the media took from the Trump administration, a Texas reporter and newspaper—and their pro bono lawyers of 13 years—have won a First Amendment victory in the Texas Supreme Court. The Texas Supreme Court in an opinion released Jan. 27 found that a news article in the West …

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‘There’s a lot of Fear,’ Gordon Quan on Immigration Ban

Houston lawyer Gordon Quan knows more than a little about immigration bans. His parents and grandparents all came from China, and Quan was born there, but raised in the United States from a young age. He thought the United States would have learned its lesson from the Chinese Exclusion Act, which banned laborers coming from …

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South Texas College of Law Houston Student, Former Undocumented Immigrant Receives ‘Law Student Pro Bono Award’

It’s typical for a child to be afraid of the dark, monsters under the bed or being alone. When she was a kid, law student Maria Ivañez was afraid of deportation. Her family moved from Venezuela when Ivañez was a child, and for ten years, she lived as an undocumented immigrant. When it came time …

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Texas Supreme Court Justice Gap Commission Calls for Better Referral System, Training

The Texas Supreme Court has some new ideas about tackling the justice gap that’s keeping poor and middle-income people from being able to afford lawyers. Those ideas, identified in a Dec. 6 report by the high court’s Commission to Expand Civil Legal Services, include creating a statewide referral system to send modest-means clients to lawyers …

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Trump’s The Andrew Jackson of Our Time, Says Historian-Partner

Dallas lawyer Talmage Boston’s first brush with presidential history came from his mom’s gift on his seventh birthday: trading cards with photos of presidents and facts about their time in office. The Winstead shareholder took a much deeper dive into the world of presidential historians in more recent years with a series of more than …

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