Alumni
Note: As we've recently redesigned our website, some of the content/features from the old website (such as the alumni database) are currently unavailable. We will be updating this section regularly, but in the meantime if you have any specific questions, feel free to get in touch with alumni relations or technical support through our Contact page.
Texas Law Review AssocationTexas Law Review alumni form a worldwide network of professionals who advance the rule of law in society. This year’s editorial board has made a strong commitment to expanding and establishing formal networking opportunities. As part of a new TLR webpage, we will include an online alumni directory and information page. We also hope to coordinate special events for alumni in cities across the county. We hope you will join us in developing new programs around the country to keep TLR alumni actively engaged in the law review network and excited about legal scholarship. Below are several ways you can get involved or take a leadership role in our endeavors: • Take a leadership role in the formation of local associations. We hope to create local associations in Austin, Houston, Dallas, Washington DC, Los Angeles, and New York City. These local associations will be run by former TLR members and host a variety of events. If there is enough interest, we would like to host happy hours for current and former TLR members in all of the cities listed above this summer. If you are interested in becoming a City Alumni Chair, please contact our administrative editor, Nick Dhesi, at tlrae88@yahoo.com. • Give a speech at the University of Texas Law Review on an area of legal scholarship. In recognition of the contributions of TLR members to legal scholarship, we would like to present the work of TLR alumni at the law school where professors, students, and local practitioners can benefit from their contribution to the field. • Join the alumni directory. If you have any questions or would like to take a leadership role, please contact our administrative editor and the Executive Director of the Texas Law Review Association, Nick Dhesi, at tlrae88@yahoo.com.
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DuesPlease consider becoming a member of the Texas Law Review Association. Membership in TLRA provides a wonderful way to keep in touch with an exciting network of TLR alumni. Membership dues provide funding for loans to deserving Review members, the Review library, purchase of office equipment and supplies. All contributions to TLRA are tax deductible. Membership levels are: Life Member ($800 or 4 installments of $200) Sustaining Life Member ($100) Annual Member ($50) Please make checks for dues payable to the Texas Law Review Association c/o Nick Dhesi, 727 E. Dean Keeton Street, Austin, TX 78705. |
Prominent TLR Alumni
Scott Atlas
Scott Atlas is a senior partner specializing in complex commercial litigation in the Houston office of Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP. Before joining Weil, Gotshal & Manges in April 2006, Mr. Atlas was a partner at the Houston office of Vinson & Elkins where he practiced for almost thirty years.
Mr. Atlas graduated magna cum laude from Yale in 1971 and received his J.D. with honors (Order of the Coif; Chancellors) in 1975 from the University of Texas School of Law where he served as Editor-in-Chief of the Texas Law Review from 1974–75.
After receiving his J.D., Mr. Atlas clerked for The Honorable Thomas Gibbs Gee, US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit from 1975–76. During his clerkship, Mr. Atlas found that the court had no organized method of finding lawyers to handle pro bono appeals. This led him in 1982 to create the Texas Appointment Plan for which he has been the coordinator since. To date, the Texas Appointment Plan has recruited more than 125 Texas law firms to provide volunteer legal representation of indigents before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in all non-capital cases tried in Texas federal courts.
In April of 1977, Mr. Atlas took on a pro bono case, which he eventually litigated in the Supreme Court. Mr. Atlas challenged the constitutionality of an automatic life sentence under the Texas habitual offender statute (which mandated a life sentence on third felony conviction) as applied to his client, Bill Rummel, who had been convicted for three petty property crimes totaling $229.11. Mr. Atlas eventually prevailed on a finding of ineffective assistance of counsel, after which he successfully lobbied the Texas legislature to eliminate the mandatory life sentencing provision.
In 1992, the government of Mexico asked Mr. Atlas to represent Ricardo Aldape Guerra, an undocumented worker from Mexico who had been sentenced to death for murdering a Houston police officer. After Mr. Atlas took the case, several federal and state courts ruled that Aldape Guerra was innocent and had been the victim of police and prosecutorial misconduct. Finally, in 1997, Mr. Atlas secured Guerra’s release when the Harris County District Attorney dropped all charges.
With over thirty years of experience at the trial and appellate level since 1976, Mr. Atlas’s practice spans matters involving antitrust, commercial arbitration, business torts, construction, contract disputes, legal malpractice, lender liability, municipal law, securities, trade secrets, trademarks infringement, and general commercial litigation. Mr. Atlas recently represented the City of Houston in a suit brought by the Houston Police Officers Pension System who sought increased funding for the pension system. The case ultimately settled with renegotiated pension terms that reduced a projected shortfall by more than $300 million. Mr. Atlas is currently representing the City of Houston in litigation over two competing tax provisions.
Mr. Atlas appears in both the 2006 and 2007 editions of The Best Lawyers in America, in the Texas Monthly among the one hundred top lawyers in Houston in 2005 and 2006, and has been listed as a “Texas Super Lawyer” every year since the survey began. He has received awards and recognition at the national, state, and local level for his professional achievements.
Among these are the Young Lawyers Association “Outstanding Young Lawyer of Houston Award” which he received in 1984; the American Bar Association Pro Bono Award, which he received in 1986 “for contributing significant work toward developing innovative approaches to the delivery of volunteer legal services to the poor”; the Texas Law Review Leon Green Award, “For Outstanding Contribution to the Legal Profession” which he received in 1997; and The University of Texas School of Law Alumni Association Distinguished Alumnus for Community Service award which he received in 2000. As a testament to his distinguished career, Mr. Atlas chaired the American Bar Association’s Section of Litigation from 2002–03, and was recently appointed by Texas Governor Rick Perry as an ex-officio member of the Governor’s Criminal Justice Advisory Council.
Mr. Atlas has been the pro-bono General Counsel of Houston’s Alley Theatre since 1985 and served for many years on the Theatre’s board and executive committees. He is a member of the Houston Shakespeare Festival and served as its first president. He remains actively involved with the University of Texas and the School of Law, serving on the University’s Committee of 125 (a long-range planning committee) from 2003–04, on the Board of Advisors for The University of Texas School of Law, and as director of The University of Texas Chancellor’s Council, Executive Committee from 2001–present. Mr. Atlas is an integral part of the Texas Law Review, having served as President of the Texas Law Review Association from 1979–80, as director of the Association from 1977–96, and as emeritus director of the Association since.
Mr. Atlas lives in Houston with his wife, U.S. District Judge Nancy. Their two sons are currently students at Yale University.
Bryan A. Garner
The New York Times called him “a silver-penned legal-writing specialist” and “the persnickety stylist for a linguistically challenged profession.” The acclaimed novelist and essayist David Foster Wallace has repeatedly written that “Bryan Garner is a genius.” And the Green Bag has added “he teaches a mean seminar.”
Garner has been fascinated with words since childhood. When he was 16, he picked up his first usage dictionary, Eric Partridge’s Usage and Abusage—“Never had I held a more exciting book.” By 18 he had absorbed Fowler and every other modern usage authority. In college he studied linguistics and the English classics at the University of Texas and Oxford.
After graduating from the University of Texas School of Law, Garner clerked for Judge Thomas M. Reavley of the Fifth Circuit, then practiced at a major firm in Dallas. He soon began teaching, first at his alma mater and now at Southern Methodist University School of Law.
Editor in chief of Black’s Law Dictionary since its seventh edition, Garner has remained a prolific author. His works include The Elements of Legal Style, The Winning Brief, The Redbook; A Manual on Legal Style, Legal Writing in Plain English, and many other books and articles. In 2003, The Chicago Manual of Style incorporated his restatement of English grammar into its 15th edition.
He tackles many hands-on projects. A member of the American Law Institute since 1992, he served as a lead reviser on its committee on bylaws and council rules. From 1992 to 1999, he helped restyle federal rules for the U.S. Judicial Conference’s Standing Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure. He has done the same for courts in California and Texas. The Association of Reporters of Judicial Decisions recognized his contributions to judicial writing in 1994 with the pretigious Henry C. Lind Award, and in 2005 the Plain Languaged Institute presented him its Lifetime Achievement Award.
