Welcome to your daily briefing on legal developments in Texas. Today we're covering 7 key stories including updates on texas legal headlines, texas legal updates, background & context. Let's dive in.
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The State Bar of Texas Blog delivers news and information covering Rule of Law, justice, law-related education, MCLE, CLE, law licenses, the Supreme Court of Texas, the Texas Bar Journal, and bar exams.
TX legal professionals rely on this resource to stay current on mandatory continuing education requirements, licensing updates, and high court developments that directly affect their practice.
The Texas Secretary of State provides the Comptroller's Office with public information reports to enable searches for specific business names in its database of taxable Texas entities, displaying matching results on-screen.
Legal professionals in TX conducting due diligence, transactional work, or compliance checks can use this centralized tool to verify entity status and tax standing without navigating multiple agencies.
The Texas Supreme Court has ended the state's reliance on the American Bar Association for law school accreditation.
This shift directly affects Texas legal professionals by altering the pathway for law school graduates to practice in the state and may reshape hiring and credentialing standards for Texas firms.
The ABA Journal, read monthly by half of the nation's 1 million lawyers, offers RSS feeds covering trends, people and finances of the legal profession.
TX legal professionals can stay current on national legal developments that shape practice standards and influence courts across the state.
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A consistently followed retention policy provides a defense against spoliation claims when documents are destroyed in the ordinary course before litigation was anticipated. Without a policy, every routine deletion looks like targeted destruction in hindsight.
Adverse-inference instructions arising from spoliation routinely turn winnable cases into losses. A documented policy, consistently applied, is the cleanest defense available.
Arbitration clauses are most often struck down for procedural unconscionability — surprise placement, font that hides them, or no opportunity to negotiate — rather than substantive issues. A clause that is conspicuous, separately initialed, and accompanies a clear written notice of waiver of jury trial survives review in most jurisdictions.
A void arbitration clause means the dispute lands in court, often with discovery and jury exposure that the clause was meant to prevent. Drafting discipline at contract formation is cheap; defending the clause years later is not.
Enforceability of employee non-competes varies dramatically by state and is trending toward narrower enforcement nationally. Common defects include geographic scope broader than the employer's actual market, duration longer than necessary to protect a legitimate interest, and lack of consideration beyond continued employment.
An overbroad non-compete is often unenforceable in its entirety, not just blue-penciled down — meaning the employer gets no protection at all. A narrower, defensible clause protects more than an aspirational one.
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