Welcome to your daily briefing on legal developments in Texas. Today we're covering 5 key stories including updates on texas legal headlines, background & context. Let's dive in.
2 stories
The Texas Supreme Court has concluded the state's dependence on the American Bar Association for law school accreditation.
This decision may impact law school standards and the legal profession's accreditation landscape in Texas.
Explore our YouTube tutorial that provides a detailed overview of the business filing process in Texas.
Understanding the business filing process is essential for legal professionals assisting clients in Texas.
Reach professionals in this market
3 stories
A preservation (litigation hold) letter is appropriate as soon as litigation is reasonably anticipated, not just after a complaint is filed. The letter should identify the matter, the document categories at issue, and the recipient's preservation duty. Failure to send one is the leading evidence of spoliation in subsequent motion practice.
Sanctions for spoliation can include adverse-inference instructions, monetary fines, and in severe cases default judgment. The cost of issuing a hold letter is one paralegal hour.
Most conflict-of-interest systems index by named party only. They miss conflicts created when the named party is a wholly-owned subsidiary, a shared parent's affiliate, or a private-equity portfolio company under common control. The model rules treat these as conflicts even though no name match exists.
A conflict that surfaces mid-matter typically requires withdrawal at the worst possible moment, plus a fee writedown for work done. Catching it at intake is a 10-minute process; catching it at month six is a six-figure problem.
Beyond civil-rights and consumer-protection statutes, many TX jurisdictions have fee-shifting provisions in landlord-tenant, mechanics' lien, insurance bad-faith, and construction-defect contexts. Pleading the fee-shifting statute in the complaint is typically required to preserve the right to recover.
A fee-shifting case has fundamentally different settlement dynamics than a non-fee case, especially in low-damages disputes where fees can dwarf the underlying claim.
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