Senior Counsel

Douglas S. Lang

Justice Douglas Lang advises on litigation and appellate strategies and presents appeals in jurisdictions across the country.

Justice Lang collaborates with the firm’s trial lawyers to devise the best appellate strategies for clients and also works directly on filings or argues cases before appellate panels. Since returning to private practice, Justice Lang has appeared in state and federal courts across Texas and presented appeals in federal circuit courts and at the U.S. Supreme Court.

Drawing on his many years of judicial service and trial experience, Justice Lang provides prompt, strategic, and solution-oriented advice on resolving or avoiding conflicts. Most recently, he represented clients in cases before the Texas Supreme Court and the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

Justice Lang served over 16 years on the Fifth District Court of Appeals in Dallas, a 13-judge appellate court with the highest case volume of the 14 intermediate appellate courts in Texas. He authored more than 2,100 opinions and participated in deciding more than 6,100 cases. During that same period, he served for six years as a member of the Texas Multi-District Litigation Panel and as chair of the Texas Commission on Judicial Conduct.

Highly respected for his tireless leadership in bar and community activities, Justice Lang’s dedication to mentoring young lawyers and devotion to civility and ethics in the legal profession have been guiding forces in his practice over 50+ years. Renowned in the field, Justice Lang is a frequent speaker at civic and continuing education events around Texas and nationally and has published many articles on appellate law, civility, and ethics.

I authored “Deeds, Not Words —Mentors As Guiding Lights of Integrity In The Legal Profession,” a compilation of mentoring experiences from leaders in the law.

Val C. Cronin

I function as a proactive advisor to my clients. I try to think ahead and come up with creative solutions to issues before they become problems for my clients. What makes coming to work exciting is coming up with creative solutions that most people don’t think of. The center of my wheelhouse is federal taxation. Since just about everything we do has a tax impact, my practice is varied. From helping clients structure their business lives from inception to sale to maximize their after-tax cash flow, to provide asset protection planning to help clients protect the wealth they have acquired, to mergers and acquisition work, to estate planning.

Val practices in the fields of mergers and acquisitions, taxation, asset protection, and estate planning. He offers considerable experience in business sales and acquisitions, family and business tax planning, asset protection, and estate planning for family succession.

Val offers years of experience structuring family business interests for growth and asset transfers and minimizing the tax consequences of those transactions in present day transfers and in transferring the family business to the next generation. He strongly believes in protecting key family assets from litigation risk and creating the business structures most likely to offer that advantage. As lawyers we frequently encounter people in crisis. He has learned to be a good listener to understand a client’s issues and concerns before he starts talking about solutions.

He has advised start-up businesses from inception through negotiating and drafting the documents to selling the business. In that process, he works with the client to structure the deal in a manner that minimizes income tax consequences and maximizes cash flow. Finally, he works with the client to plan for minimizing estate taxes and protect the assets the client has spent their business lives accumulating.

Val is a Certified Public Accountant.

David L. Campbell

I have been called “user friendly” and a lawyer who always looks at the big picture.

David focuses his work on the bankruptcy, creditor rights, and real estate title litigation practices of the firm. His clients include institutional lenders, pension funds, landowners, developers, asset managers, landlords, tenants, lessors, lessees, contractors, bankruptcy debtors, and trustees. He serves diverse industries, including real estate, energy, and technology.

David was an editor of “Foreclosure & Related Remedies,” published by ABA Press in 2009. He was also a National Business Institute speaker and an advisor to the Uniform Law Commission Home Foreclosure Procedures Act Committee.

J. Michael “Mike” Sutherland

With four decades of experience as a bankruptcy attorney, Michael Sutherland guides companies in insolvency issues, business ownership disputes, directors and officers, litigation, insolvency and reorganization, the occasional receivership action, and professional liability matters. Michael’s clients include primarily Texas- and New York-based large corporate lenders, debtors, healthcare companies, airlines, and retail giants, as well as not-for-profit organizations and municipalities.

Michael defends officers and directors in cases of alleged negligence and fellow bankruptcy attorneys in cases of alleged malpractice, as well as a range of other business clients. Lawyers often bring him in on cases that have proven to be particularly difficult and complicated because they appreciate his keen legal and business insights, his calm way of operating, and his ability to bring order to chaos. Michael also excels at seeing the end game earlier than most. Anticipating where a case is going gives him an advantage in crafting strategy.

Anyone can figure out a way to tear down a company, but I find it highly rewarding to first explore if there’s a way to fix a broken company’s problems and build it back up. Bankruptcy negotiations can sometimes get heated, but I work on constantly lowering the temperature in a case rather than heating things up. In addition, I’m often told that I have a better than average ability to see around corners, and then certainly helps me in these repair efforts.

Ken Carroll is a former federal prosecutor turned litigator who handles an array of business-related matters—including stockholder derivative actions and other director and officer matters, legal malpractice cases, antitrust disputes, and class action lawsuits, as well as appeals. Whether Ken is in trial, drafting an appellate brief, or analyzing a complex issue of corporate governance, one thing is constant: his commitment to meeting the client’s needs.

While Ken understands that succeeding in a case for the client’s benefit can involve compromise as well as combat, he fundamentally approaches all matters with the same tenacity he brought to criminal prosecution. And whether his client heads a multinational corporation or is one person with one problem, he makes certain they receive the same level of dedication and careful attention. This approach has earned him peer recognition and numerous accolades. But, more important to Ken, it’s what his clients expect of him and what he expects of himself.