Event: The Unitary Executive in Action with Texas Solicitor General Aaron Nielson
Date: Tuesday, May 14, 2025
Time: 12:00 p.m.–1:00 p.m.
Location: Arts District Mansion
CLE Credit: CLE credit is pending

Aaron Nielson is a professor on leave from BYU Law to serve as Solicitor General of Texas.  He writes in the areas of administrative law and federal courts.  Before joining the legal academy, he was an appellate and antitrust partner at Kirkland & Ellis, LLP. A graduate of Harvard Law School, he clerked for the Fifth Circuit, the D.C. Circuit, and for Justice Samuel Alito of the U.S. Supreme Court.  Since joining the academy, he served for six years as a public member of the Administrative Conference of the United States, where he continues to serve as a senior fellow.  As Solicitor General of Texas, he leads of a team of appellate lawyers who litigate many of the State’s most important constitutional and statutory cases.

Event: Debate: Should Courts Issue Nationwide Injunctions? with Gregg Costa and Benjamin D. Wilson
Date: Tuesday, April 15, 2025
Time: 12:00 p.m.–1:00 p.m.
Location: Arts District Mansion
CLE Credit: CLE credit is pending

Gregg Costa is a partner in Gibson Dunn’s Houston office and co-chair of the firm’s Trials Practice Group. Before joining Gibson Dunn, Mr. Costa served for more than ten years as a federal trial and appellate judge. He served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit from 2014 to 2022. After his nomination by President Obama, the Senate confirmed him by a vote of 97-0. No federal appellate judge nominated since has received more votes. Mr. Costa first served as a district judge for the Southern District of Texas from 2012 to 2014. When appointed to the bench, he was the youngest-sitting federal judge at age 39.  Mr. Costa presided over thirty federal trials in four different venues (he continued handling district court matters while serving on the court of appeals). Before taking the bench, Mr. Costa was an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Houston from 2005 to 2012.

Mr. Costa graduated from Dartmouth College and with highest honors from the University of Texas School of Law, where he served as Editor-in-Chief of the Texas Law Review. After law school, he clerked for Chief Justice William Rehnquist and for Judge A. Raymond Randolph of the D.C. Circuit. Between clerkships, he served as a Bristow Fellow in the Office of Solicitor General. He has taught Federal Jurisdiction at the University of Houston Law Center, which named him an Honorary Alumnus in 2021.

Benjamin D. Wilson is Of Counsel in the Dallas office of Gibson Dunn, where he is a member of the firm’s Appellate and Constitutional Law Practice Group.

Ben has presented oral argument in the Texas Supreme Court, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth, Second, and Seventh Circuits, and the Texas appellate courts. He has also often represented clients before the United States Supreme Court and other state and federal courts of appeals. In addition, Ben often handles critical or dispositive motions in both state and federal trial courts.

Prior to rejoining Gibson Dunn, Ben worked as lead counsel for commercial appellate matters for the world’s largest retailer. Ben also has a distinguished record of public service in state and federal government. As Deputy Solicitor General in the Office of the Texas Solicitor General, he successfully briefed and argued many of the state’s most important appeals and advised on many of the state’s most important trial court matters. As Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Policy, Ben lead for the Department’s efforts to confirm federal judicial nominees, including Justice Amy Coney Barrett and over eighty lower court judges. Earlier in his career, Ben served as Counsel to Senator Ted Cruz on the Senate Judiciary Committee and as Special Counsel to Senator Cruz for the confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Ben clerked for Judge Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and later for Judge James C. Ho of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Ben received his law degree with honors from the University of Chicago Law School and his Bachelor of Arts degree from Washington and Lee University magna cum laude with honors in history.

Ben is a member of the Texas Bar. He is admitted to practice before the Second, Fifth, Seventh, and Ninth Circuits and before the U.S. District Courts for the Northern and Western Districts of Texas.

Event: An Original Document for Every Song in Hamilton: An American Musical with Judge Charles Eskridge
Date: Wednesday, March 26, 2025
Time: 12:00 p.m.–1:00 p.m.
Location: Arts District Mansion
CLE Credit: CLE credit is pending

Hon. Charles Eskridge, Judge, United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas, Houston Division, was nominated by President Donald J. Trump and took his seat in October 2019 following confirmation by the Senate.  From 1994 to 2019, Judge Eskridge litigated complex commercial disputes in private practice in Houston, Texas.  He teaches Origins of the Federal Constitution as an adjunct professor at the University of Texas School of Law and the University of Houston Law Center.  He also served as a law clerk to Chief Judge Charles Clark of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, as a law clerk to Justice Byron White of the Supreme Court of the United States, and as a special assistant to the Hon. Howard Holtzmann of the Iran/U.S. Claims Tribunal in The Hague.  Judge Eskridge is a graduate of Trinity University and Pepperdine University School of Law.

Event: Big Brother Watching: The History of Government Surveillance with Logan Beirne
Date: Thursday, February 20, 2025
Time: 12:00 p.m.–1:00 p.m.
Location: Arts District Mansion
CLE Credit: CLE credit is pending

Logan Beirne is an ISP Faculty Fellow at the Information Society Project and Research Scholar in Law at Yale Law School. He is also the Chief Executive Officer of Matterhorn Transactions, Inc., a legal information services company that provides transaction term language and market trend analytics to law firms and financial institutions across the US, UK, and Canada. He has invested in, and helped to build, multiple other successful software companies. He was previously an associate at Sullivan & Cromwell LLP. Beirne earned a B.S. in Finance at Fairfield University, was a Fulbright Scholar at Queen’s University, and received a J.D. from Yale Law School, where he was a Coker Fellow and awarded the Edgar M. Cullen Prize.

In 2013, he published the bestselling Blood of Tyrants: George Washington & the Forging of the Presidency, which was selected for the Colby Award and the Lincoln Medal. The book explores how the battlefield decisions of the Founders continue to shape the meaning of the U.S. Constitution. Beirne was a contributor to the casebook Iconic Cases in Corporate Law (West Academic Publishing, 2008). Beirne and his writings have been featured by The Wall Street Journal, NY Times, USA Today, The Washington Times, Reuters, Fox News, National Review, and other media outlets.

Event: Challenging the FTC’s Noncompete Ban: A Discussion with Ryan, LLC’s Chief Legal Officer and Outside Counsel
Date: Wednesday, January 22, 2025
Time: 12:00 p.m.–1:00 p.m.
Location: Arts District Mansion
CLE Credit: CLE credit is pending

John Smith is the Senior Vice President, Chief Legal Officer and General Counsel at Ryan, LLC. Based at Ryan’s global headquarters in Dallas, Texas, John Smith brings more than 20 years of experience as a proven leader in the legal, business, and national security communities, including all three branches of the United States Government.

Prior to joining Ryan, Mr. Smith spent 12 years in Texas and Virginia at Raytheon Technologies, an American multinational aerospace and defense corporation. He pioneered roles as the company’s first cybersecurity lawyer and first privacy lawyer. During the last seven years, as a divisional Vice President and General Counsel, Mr. Smith led the legal departments of the two Raytheon divisions focused primarily on services.

Before Raytheon, Mr. Smith served as Associate Counsel to U.S. President George W. Bush. He was the lead lawyer for the White House Homeland Security Council staff. He began his legal career by clerking for Judge Samuel Alito, a few years before Alito’s elevation to the U.S. Supreme Court, and then by practicing at the international law firm of Covington & Burling.

Mr. Smith served a decade as a U.S. Army reservist and two years as a missionary in Ukraine and Russia, a few years after the collapse of the Soviet Union. He graduated with high honors from both Princeton University and Brigham Young University Law School.

Andrew Kilberg is a partner in Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher’s Washington, D.C. office, where he practices in the firm’s litigation department. A member of the firm’s Labor and Employment, Administrative and Regulatory, and Appellate and Constitutional Law practice groups, Andrew has significant experience challenging onerous federal regulations, advising on regulatory proposals, and defending agency enforcement actions and investigations. He has represented clients in federal district and appellate courts and before the U.S. Supreme Court, as well as before various agencies, authoring dozens of briefs, comment letters, and other submissions. His matters have covered wage and hour, ERISA, occupational safety and health, anti-discrimination, whistleblower, and labor relations issues. In addition to his labor and employment expertise, Andrew in 2019 was named a “Rising Star” in Telecom by Law360.

Between 2019 and 2021, Andrew served as Counselor to Secretary Eugene Scalia at the United States Department of Labor. In that role, he advised the Secretary and Deputy Secretary on a wide range of matters and led teams on important regulatory and other projects for the Office of the Secretary, including matters concerning environmental, social, and governance investing, proxy voting, the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, independent contractor status, apprenticeships, religious accommodation, evidentiary standards and procedures for non-discrimination enforcement actions, and the coronavirus pandemic. He also was responsible for coordination with several other executive branch agencies.

In addition to his work in court, Andrew regularly authors comment letters submitted to federal agencies, including the Department of Labor, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Federal Communications Commission. He also has written position statements submitted to the National Labor Relations Board and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, provided extensive advice on federal and state vaccine-related rules and litigation, labor relations, anti-discrimination and anti-retaliation matters, and ERISA issues, and represented clients in agency investigations and audits.

Before joining Gibson Dunn, Andrew clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy and Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.

He received his law degree from the University of Virginia School of Law, where he was a member of the Order of the Coif and served as Articles Development Editor of the Virginia Law Review. He received an M. Phil. in Historical Studies from the University of Cambridge and was graduated magna cum laude  with an A.B. in History from Princeton University.

Andrew is a member of the Virginia bar, and he is admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court, U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Seventh, Eighth, Ninth, Eleventh, and D.C. Circuits, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the Supreme Court of Virginia, and the District of Columbia Court of Appeals.

Stephen Hammer is a litigation associate in the Dallas office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher.

Before joining the firm, Mr. Hammer served as a law clerk to Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. of the Supreme Court of the United States, Judge Gregory G. Katsas of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and Judge Jeffrey S. Sutton of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.

Mr. Hammer graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he served as managing editor of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy. Before law school, Mr. Hammer served as an infantry officer in the 82nd Airborne Division of the United States Army. His military decorations include the Bronze Star. Mr. Hammer received an M.Phil. in theology from the University of Oxford, where he studied on a Rhodes scholarship. He received an A.B. summa cum laude in classics from Princeton University and graduated as Latin salutatorian.

Mr. Hammer is a member of the Texas and District of Columbia bars.

Event: Administrative Law After Loper Bright with Kasdin Mitchell
Date: Wednesday, December 4, 2024
Time: 12:00 p.m.–1:00 p.m.
Location: Arts District Mansion
CLE Credit: CLE credit is available

Kasdin Mitchell is a litigation partner with a focus on complex litigation at the trial and appellate level.  She has obtained successful outcomes for clients at all stages of litigation.  She has tried several cases to verdict, including serving on the trial team that resulted in a complete defense victory for 3M in one of the bellwether trials in the largest multidistrict litigation in history.  She has argued in the Fourth, Sixth, Ninth and Eleventh Circuits as well as numerous federal district and state courts, and she has filed appellate briefs in every federal court of appeals except one.  Kasdin also has represented numerous clients at the certiorari and merits stage in the U.S. Supreme Court, helping secure a $12 billion victory against the federal government for health insurers, a victory for Facebook in a case limiting liability under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, and a victory for a major pipeline company in a case involving the intersection of the federal eminent domain power and the Natural Gas Act.  Her litigation experience spans a wide range of subject areas, including environmental, energy, securities, contract, tort and constitutional law.  Kasdin has been recognized as a “Rising Star” by Law360, the National Law Journal and SuperLawyers.  She was also selected to serve on the Law360 Appellate Editorial Advisory Board and is a Barrister in the Higginbotham Inn of Court.

Prior to Kirkland, Kasdin served as a law clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas on the U.S. Supreme Court and to Judge William H. Pryor Jr. on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.  She also served as the Assistant Solicitor General for the State of Alabama.  Prior to law school, Kasdin worked as the Assistant Press Secretary to the First Lady at the White House, where she was an on-the-record spokesperson for Mrs. Laura Bush, and in the Office of Fossil Energy at the U.S. Department of Energy, where she worked on issues related to oil, gas and coal.

Event: Supreme Court Roundup with Stephen J. Hammer
Date: Wednesday, August 21, 2024
Time: 12:00 p.m.–1:00 p.m.
Location: Arts District Mansion
CLE Credit: CLE credit is pending

Stephen Hammer is a associate in the Dallas office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, where he is a member of the firm’s Appellate and Constitutional Law and Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice groups. He served as a law clerk to Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. of the Supreme Court of the United States during October Term 2020. He also served as a law clerk to Judge Jeffrey S. Sutton of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and Judge Gregory G. Katsas of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

Mr. Hammer attended Harvard Law School, where he served as a managing editor of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy and received his J.D. magna cum laude. Before law school, he served as an infantry officer in the 82nd Airborne Division and deployed twice to southern Afghanistan. Mr. Hammer received an M.Phil. in theology from Oxford, where he studied on a Rhodes scholarship. He received his A.B. summa cum laude in classics from Princeton and graduated as Latin salutatorian. Mr. Hammer resides in his hometown of Dallas with his wife and their six children.

Event: Federal Election Law Update with the Honorable Trey Trainor
Date: Tuesday, August 1, 2024
Time: 12:00 p.m.–1:00 p.m.
Location: Arts District Mansion
2101 Ross Ave. | Dallas, TX 75201
CLE Credit: CLE credit available

Please join us as we welcome the Honorable Trey Trainor, Commissioner on the Federal Election Commission, for a federal election law update. Commissioner Trainor will discuss how much has been raised and spent in the 2024 election cycle, recent advisory opinions that the FEC has approved that affect state political activity as it relates to federal candidate and organization participation, and legislation pending before Congress.

Trey Trainor, of Driftwood, TX, serves as a Commissioner on the Federal Election Commission (FEC). Nominated by President Donald J. Trump and confirmed by the United States Senate, Trainor has had a distinguished career primarily focused on election law, campaign finance, and ethics.
 
Before his current role, Trainor chaired the FEC in 2020. His legal career spans over two decades, during which he has served in various significant roles, including as Special Assistant to the Secretary of Defense, General Counsel to the Texas Secretary of State, and as legal counsel to the Republican Party of Texas. Prior to joining the FEC, Trainor was a partner at Akerman, LLP, and also operated his own private practice.
 
Commissioner Trainor is known for his extensive expertise in campaign finance issues and has testified before Congress multiple times. He is a frequent commentator on these matters, contributing to outlets such as Fox News, The Washington Examiner, and The Daily Caller. He completed his undergraduate studies at Texas A&M University and earned his law degree from Texas A&M University School of Law.

Event: The SEC’s Regulatory Agenda
Date: Tuesday, June 11, 2024
Time: 12:00 p.m.–1:00 p.m.
Location: Arts District Mansion
2101 Ross Ave. | Dallas, TX 75201
CLE Credit: CLE credit pending

During the tenure of Chair Gary Gensler, the Securities and Exchange Commission has pursued an aggressive rule-making agenda with far-reaching effects on the American financial industry. Please join us for a panel discussion of the SEC’s recent major regulatory actions and their impact on this key sector of our nation’s economy.

David Woodcock is a partner in the Dallas and Washington offices of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. He is a co-chair of the firm’s Securities Enforcement Practice Group. Prior to joining Gibson Dunn, he was Assistant General Counsel – Corporate at ExxonMobil Corporation, where he led all aspects of corporate, securities, ESG/sustainability, and governance. Earlier in his career, he served as Director of the Fort Worth Regional Office of the SEC from 2011 to 2015, where he led over 120 lawyers, accountants, and examiners on all aspects of the SEC’s enforcement and examination activities in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Kansas. He clerked for Judge Howell Cobb of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. He received his Bachelor of Science degree in Accounting from Louisiana State University and his JD with honors from the University of Texas Law School.
 
Isaac Haas has been associated with HBK Capital Management since 2015 and serves as HBK’s General Counsel, with primary responsibility for managing the firm’s legal function. Prior to joining HBK, Isaac was an attorney at Haynes and Boone, LLP, where he advised investment funds and operating companies on corporate and securities matters. He began his legal career as an associate at Jones Day. Isaac received a B.B.A. degree in Finance and Risk Management & Insurance in 2004 from Baylor University. He received a J.D. degree magna cum laude in 2011 from Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law, where he was a Sumners Scholar and served on the editorial board of the SMU Law Review Association.
 
James A. Deeken is a partner at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP specializing in investment fund formation and related securities regulatory matters. He also serves as an adjunct faculty member at SMU’s Dedman School of Law where he teaches investment funds law and regulation. His recent writings on securities regulations and SEC rule making have appeared in Bloomberg Law, Insights: The Corporate and Securities Law Advisor, the Cato Institute’s Regulation magazine and the Securities Regulation Law Journal, where he serves on the Board of Contributing Editors and Advisors. He earned both his BA and JD degrees at Vanderbilt University. Before law school, he worked in the securities industry as a bond trader.
 
Brian Richman is a senior associate in the Dallas office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. He is a member of the firm’s Appellate and Constitutional Law, Litigation, and Administrative and Regulatory Practice groups. Brian represents clients in high-stakes appellate, administrative law, and litigation matters. His practice includes litigating cutting-edge constitutional and administrative law issues, challenging agency rulemakings, and defending against government enforcement actions, along with other complex litigation matters. He has extensive experience in the financial services sector. Before joining the firm, Brian clerked for Judge Stephen F. Williams of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He also served as a securities compliance officer at Goldman Sachs. Brian received his JD from Yale Law School.

Event: A Debate on the Supreme Court Code of Conduct with Professors Michael S. McGinniss and John S. Dzienkowski
Date: Wednesday, May 8, 2024
Time: 12:00 p.m.–1:00 p.m.
Location: Arts District Mansion
2101 Ross Ave. | Dallas, TX 75201
CLE Credit: CLE and ethics credit pending