FORUM HISTORY

In 1997, Roland Castaneda left the private practice of law to be the general counsel of the Dallas Area Rapid Transit Authority (DART). Though his years of practice had prepared him as a lawyer, he had received little education and training in leading and managing a large legal department.

 

In the fall of 1997, he met with one of his Dallas outside counsel, Forrest Smith (partner with the Dallas firm of Bell Nunnally & Martin), and discussed starting an organization in which legal best practices could be shared between in-house leadership in corporations, non-profit organizations and government agencies. Forrest believed that busy general counsel would not take the time to meet with other general counsel for general networking and to discuss best practices.

 

Roland deferred the idea, but it continued to gnaw at him. In a few months he was talking with Forrest again about the idea and Forrest suggested vetting it with several of Forrest’s general counsel clients. They met with Tom Everhart (Raytheon), Keith McDole (GC, Occidental Chemical), Rod Miller (GC, Southern Baptist Annuity Board), Ron Taylor (GC, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas), and Terry Taylor (GC, ClubCorp). Roland outlined his proposal and the other general counsel thought it was a terrific idea. Forrest offered to provide the initial funding to pay the expenses required to set up the organization and in the fall of 1998, the Dallas-Fort Worth General Counsel Management Practices Forum (“DFWGCMPF”) was founded.

 

Roland and the initial founders designed the Forum as a partnership between in-house and outside counsel and legal service and product providers. Members are general counsel and senior managing counsel with significant leadership and management responsibilities in a corporation, non-profit organization or government agency.

 

Underwriters are principally law firms, plus a few legal service and product providers who pay an annual fee.  They are provided with access to the members through chapter board membership, attendance at quarterly educational meetings, and the annual conference. The annual underwriter fees have allowed the Forum to maintain low annual member dues and cover most of the organizational overheads. Today annual member dues are $500, with discounts for large legal departments, non-profit organizations, and government agencies.

 

In November 2000, the DFWGCMPF changed its name to The Texas General Counsel Forum, referred to by members as the Forum.  At the same time, the leadership determined that the Forum needed to hire staff to support their volunteer efforts, and they hired the first Executive Director, Sandra Contreras.  One of the founding Underwriters (Gardere Wynne & Sewell) provided office space, and within a year of hiring Sandra, an additional staff person was hired.

 

Between 2001 and 2003, the Houston Chapter and Austin-San Antonio Chapters were founded.  Roland also visited with a group of general counsel in Mexico City and discussed the possibility of starting a chapter there.  Ultimately, the delegation in Mexico was not prepared to found a chapter.

 

In 2003, a small delegation of in-house and outside counsel from California visited the Forum’s annual conference, and talked with Forum leadership about establishing a similar organization in California. The Forum was not prepared to establish a chapter outside of Texas, so the group established the California General Counsel Forum (“CAGCF”).  The California organization had a meteoric rise in membership, and held an annual conference in 2005 that rivaled the Texas conference in sheer numbers.  However, in late 2006 the organization disbanded.

 

The leadership of the California group was a corporate chief legal officer, a general counsel of a municipal organization, and the partner with a law firm.  Without in-house leadership at the helm of the organization, the organization became unable to meet the content needs of its members.  Based on discussions with one of the leaders of the group, it became apparent that their inability to generate new content for their programs, compounded by the absence of paid staff, resulted in the group folding.

 

Leadership

 

From 2000 to 2003, the Forum grew to 220 members, but stayed at that level through 2005. In early 2005, the President of the Forum, Craig Glidden (then SVP and GC of Chevron Phillips Chemical) recommended that the Forum hire a Chief Operating Officer.  On July 1, Lee Emery joined the Forum as the first Chief Executive Officer with the mandate to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the association, expand membership, and launch the organization nationally.

 

Programming

 

The Forum’s 2005 Conference of General Counsel is held in November, and was designed and led by a committee of members and underwriters under the chairmanship of Ron Barger (SVP and GC of the Archon Group, Irving, TX) and David Runnels (Partner of Andrews Kurth, Houston, TX).  Barger and Runnels created a legal conference that was atypical of other legal conference, introducing several innovations that made the conference unusual and spectacular.

 

Though it was not unusual to have a conference theme, they took it one step further and designed a one-day conference centered on a single book (Make the Rules or Your Rivals Will, by Dr. Richard Shell). The other session speakers were asked to read the book, and integrated their sessions with the overall theme of the book. The conference theme was “Getting Back to Business: 360º of Legal Strategy,” and addressed the major subjects outlined in Shell’s book.

 

As veteran conference attendees, Barger and Runnels had attended many legal conferences that had panel after panel of lawyers and experts discussing various and often diverse topics focused on the practice of the law. Most of these sessions were held in well-lit conference ballrooms and meeting halls, and quite often the attendees were seated in rows of classroom seating. Each session was punctuated by 15-30 minute breaks between sessions.

 

Eschewing the Mount Rushmore of talking heads, they invited nationally recognized speakers to join Dr. Shell, and make their presentations in stand-up fashion, on a large stage (40’ x 12’), under professional stage lights, and before an audience in a darkened ballroom. It was as much theater as it was a conference.

 

Most daring at the time was instituting a no-break format with only a brief introduction before each new session. Refreshments were served at the back of the ballroom so that attendees could get a cup of coffee without missing a speaker. This created the atmospheric of a large living room where attendees took refreshments at their leisure. The goal was to create a momentum that would carry the audience through the morning and afternoon toward a climatic closing session.

 

In 2006, the Forum founded a rigorous in-house leadership and management program in association with the Executive Education Department and Business School of the Southern Methodist University.
 
Unlike similar programs that are designed by academicians and law firm attorneys, FILL was designed “by” general counsel and “for” general counsel and senior managing counsel.  True to the Institute’s name, the relatively small classes (no more than 35) focus on the skills and tools needed to lead an in-house legal department through the fiscal, cultural, organizational and management hurdles faced by in-house leaders today.
 
Students meet in three, two-day sessions in February, March and April, and participate in 46 hours of classroom study, discussion, and small group projects.  Each class is led by an SMU professor, most of whom have been with the Institute since its founding.  Continuing Legal Educations credits awarded by the Texas State Bar are 27 hours of participatory, plus 3 hours of ethics.
 
Many of the companies that participate in the program have for several years.  Company participants include AT&T; BP America; PepsiCo; Kimberly Clark Corporation; Celanese Corp.; ConocoPhillips; Flour Corporation; McAfee; 7-Eleven; and Texas Instruments.

 

Today, the Forum has 550 members representing more than 350 companies.  About 70% of the members are general counsel, and the larger chapters have 15-20 meetings and events each year.
 
The Forum strives to be the best at discovering, benchmarking and sharing best practices, and delivering them to members in a peer-to-peer community environment.  No legal department, even the largest and most well-funded, knows it all.  In-house innovation comes from diverse sources, and the most direct path to those solutions is from the innovators themselves.

 

 

Best practices originate from many sources, and our members want to tap into those sources, share what we have learned, and expand our professional and personal networking.  Thus, even though Texas has one of the largest and vibrant communities of in-house leaders in the country, and many legal best practices are discovered and developed in Texas, much remains to be learned from other regions.

 

Discussions of national expansion began in January 2006, and were continued through a group of Texas Statewide Board committees. The byproduct of those committees culminated in the work of the Branding & Growth Committee, led by Craig Glidden (then SVP & General Counsel of Chevron Phillips Chemical, LLP).  The Committee commissioned a series of member and underwriter surveys, and began planning for national expansion.

 

In September 2010, the Atlanta Chapter was established, and opened its doors to in-house leaders in 2011.

 

The Forum is seeking prominent general counsel across the U.S. to establish new chapters in their home cities.