Law school graduates who passed the Texas July 2014 bar exam and have a connection to San Antonio could choose to be sworn in as a Texas lawyer at a ceremony in Bexar County on Nov. 13 instead of a larger ceremony in Austin on Nov. 17. The Bexar County Women’s Bar Foundation and the San Antonio Young Lawyers Association sponsored a first-of-its-kind induction ceremony in Bexar County. Shari Mao, an associate with Jackson Walker in San Antonio, said she helped organize the ceremony to provide a local option for new attorneys who may have started new jobs and found it difficult to travel to Austin for the State Bar of Texas’ swearing-in ceremony. “I wanted to do something for our community here in San Antonio so we can celebrate with the new attorneys,” said Mao, a 2012 graduate of St. Mary’s University School of Law. “I graduated in 2012 and I wanted to go up to Austin but sometimes it’s kind of difficult to travel once you start working as an attorney,” she said. Chief Justice Catherine Stone of the Fourth Court of Appeals in San Antonio was scheduled to swear in the new lawyers following an introduction by U.S. District Judge Xavier Rodriguez of San Antonio. It was to be held at the Cadena Reeves Justice Center. Mao said that after the new lawyers take the oath, representatives from a number of local support organizations will speak to them. More than three dozen new lawyers signed up for the ceremony, she said. That’s in contrast to the large ceremony in Austin, where the State Bar of Texas expects about 1,100 new lawyers to be sworn in by members of the Texas Supreme Court and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. New lawyers can also be sworn in individually by a judge or notary.

Austin Expansion

Greenberg Traurig expanded its Austin office by hiring three shareholders and two associates. The firm hired shareholders Joshua Bernstein, a real estate attorney formerly with Armbrust & Brown; Todd Kimbrough, a regulatory attorney who was general counsel of Lubbock Power & Light; and Elizabeth Rogers, who formerly worked for the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts Office as the chief privacy officer for the state. Greenberg Traurig also hired corporate associate William Teten Jr., formerly with Vinson & Elkins, and real estate associate Katie Van Dyk, who came from McLean & Howard. Rogers started work at Greenberg Traurig on Nov. 3, while Van Dyk, Kimbrough and Bernstein started in October and Teten in September. The firm announced all of the lateral hirings on Nov. 10. With the new hires, the firm has 21 lawyers in Austin. Darrell Windham, co-managing shareholder of the Austin office, said the firm has targeted Texas as a strategic growth area, and the lateral hires fit into strategic practice groups. He said the firm has a transactional real estate practice in Austin, but Bernstein adds to the local focus, and Rogers’ data privacy and cybersecurity practice is an important growing practice area. Also, Kimbrough’s regulatory practice fits into the firm’s global energy practice, Windham said. Kimbrough said he joined Greenberg Traurig because its geographic reach will help him expand his practice, and because of the firm’s entrepreneurial culture. “I really like that business mind,” he said. Rogers said she’s excited to join Greenberg Traurig’s highly regarded data privacy and cybersecurity practice. “What we hope to develop is this 24-hour global panic button,” she said. Bernstein said Greenberg Traurig has a “really deep bench” in real estate in Texas and nationally, but wants to build the practice in Austin. “I felt like they got it, they really understood that every market is unique, you can’t bring sort of one way of doing things everywhere and expect it to work,” he said. The firm also recently hired Jennifer McEwan as a law and policy senior director. The 1,750-lawyer Greenberg Traurig also has Texas offices in Houston and Dallas.