Welcome to your daily briefing on legal developments in Texas. Today we're covering 8 key stories including updates on texas legal headlines, background & context. Let's dive in.
5 stories
The Texas Secretary of State supplies public information reports to the Comptroller’s Office to support queries for specific business names within the database of taxable Texas entities.
Legal professionals in TX can utilize this access to verify business names and review entity records for due diligence and compliance matters.
The Texas Supreme Court has officially terminated the state's reliance on the American Bar Association for law school accreditation.
This ruling significantly impacts the regulatory framework for legal education and attorney licensing within Texas, directly affecting how future lawyers qualify to practice in the state.
The ABA Journal, read by half of the nation's lawyers monthly, offers RSS feeds to cover trends, people, and finances in the legal profession.
Texas legal professionals can use these feeds to stay informed on national legal trends, financial shifts, and key figures affecting the practice of law.
The State Bar of Texas operates as the official membership organization and regulatory body for attorneys licensed to practice in the state.
TX legal professionals rely on this resource for licensing, continuing education, ethics guidance, and practice management tools essential to maintaining compliance and advancing their careers.
The State Bar of Texas Blog provides news and information for TX lawyers and attorneys regarding the Rule of Law, justice, law-related education, MCLE, CLE, law licenses, the Supreme Court of Texas, the Texas Bar Journal, and bar exams.
This resource is essential for legal professionals in TX to stay compliant with continuing education requirements and stay informed about key developments in the Texas legal system.
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.
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.
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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