Stories of lawsuits, lawyers being arrested, and judges being sanctioned are clearly newsworthy, but not all of legal news reporting has to be about doom and gloom.

Texas Lawyer in 2019 also reported the stories of Texas law firms and attorneys who are taking positive action to make the world a better place.

We reviewed all our headlines of the year to come up with this list of articles that warmed our hearts. We hope they'll bring you a smile in the final days of the decade.

In February, Texas Lawyer featured the story of Chasity Henry, who founded The NEW Roundtable, a group with the mission of empowering African American women lawyers, enhancing their careers and influencing the wider legal profession. In the five years since it was founded in 2014, The NEW Roundtable has grown from 25 to 90 members and become a shining symbol of how networking, mentorship and career development opportunities can launch women-of-color attorneys' careers into the stratosphere.

"Formal networks aren't in place, oftentimes, for African American women," said Henry, assistant general counsel of corporate affairs and legal strategy at the Irving, Texas-based $18 billion company with brands like Kleenex, Huggies and Kotex. "So we created our own."

Another Happy Day for Lawyers, Clients in 'Actual Innocence' Case

Many attorneys enter the practice of law with a dream of helping others, and that dream has come true for lawyers who help wrongfully convicted people win their freedom. Criminal defense attorneys Nina Morrison and Gary Udashen, collectively, have successfully fought to prove that 47 people were wrongfully convicted. In May, Texas Lawyer reported on the actual innocence hearings of two of the attorneys' clients.

"Nothing in my career is as satisfying as this type of work, where you are able to help get someone exonerated for something they did not do and for which they have spent years in prison," said Udashen, board president of the Innocence Project of Texas.

Leslie Thorne and Emily Westridge Black Named Texas Lawyer's 2019 Co-Attorneys of the Year

In September, Texas Lawyer honored Haynes and Boone partners Leslie Thorne and Emily Westridge as Co-Attorneys of the Year for the unusual legal strategy they devised to persuade a Texas federal judge to issue an order delaying a Honduran woman's deportation.

That strategy, and the resulting July 2018 order, has changed the fate of multiple asylum seekers. It's a good example how pro bono work from talented Big Law attorneys can do good for people on a large scale.

Texas Bar's Incubator Expands Statewide, Goes Virtual

For a long time, low- and middle-income Texans have represented themselves in court because they simply can't afford attorneys. But now there's evidence lawyers have a desire to fill the so-called "Justice Gap."

Because it saw demand from attorneys across Texas, the Texas Opportunity and Justice Incubator, a program of the State Bar of Texas that trains attorneys to make a living representing underserved populations, announced in October it plans to go virtual and open its program to lawyers across the Lone Star State.

Texas Supreme Court to Ponder Parental-Leave Continuance Rule

The legal profession has long had a problem holding on to women attorneys. State Bar of Texas President Randy Sorrels this year made progress on one proposal meant to keep female lawyers in the practice. He proposed a new court rule that would allow male or female lawyers expecting a baby or adopting one to get an automatic trial continuance if they were the lead attorney on the case.

"Trying to have a family and practice law is not easy. Trying to juggle that is a real art, [and] mostly the burden falls on the women in our profession," said Sorrels.

Texas Lawyers Score $50 Million Settlement in Clean Water Act Case

Lawyers can serve the greater good, as Texas Lawyer discovered in October when it reported an enormous environmental settlement that devotes tens of millions of dollars to rehabilitating pollution along the Texas Gulf Coast.

A team of attorneys working alongside Texas RioGrande Legal Aid scored a $50 million settlement from a plastics company that's polluted coastal bays for years. Nearly $20 million will fund a nonprofit effort to create a fishing cooperative to revitalize marine ecosystems and boost the area's fishing, shrimping and oystering industries, which declined partially because of the pollution. Calhoun County will receive $12 million to develop a new park and to restore one beach where pollution was found. Other funds will go to various nonprofits.

O'Quinn Foundation Gives UH $16M for New Law Center Building

Earlier this month, Texas Lawyer told the story of The John M. O'Quinn Foundation's gift of more than $16 million to the University of Houston to help fund construction of a new $90 million building for the University of Houston Law Center. O'Quinn, a successful trial lawyer in Houston who graduated from the law school, died in a car accident 10 years ago in Houston but left his estate to his foundation.

Leonard Baynes, dean of the UH Law Center, said the $16 million donation is the largest gift in the law school's history.

These Texas Lawyers Are Giving Away Millions of Dollars

Texas Lawyer reported just before Christmas that two firms plan to gift $6 million in attorney fees to launch programs for foster children. Houston-based litigation boutique Yetter Coleman and Big Law firm Haynes and Boone want to gift their fees they won in a pro bono civil rights lawsuit to launch new programs for Texas foster care children.

"This case, for us, for my firm, has been a labor of love from the beginning," said Yetter Coleman managing partner Paul Yetter. "We are just on the cusp of major reform, and this has always been about the children."

Other stories that made us smile this year: