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49 Headnotes 1 (2024)

handle is hein.barjournals/hdba0049 and id is 1 raw text is: Dallas Bar Association January 2024 Volume 49 Number 1 Focus Corporate Counsel/Securities DBA's 115th President: Bill Mateja BY GRIFFIN RUBIN The Dallas Bar Association welcomes its 2024 President, Bill Mateja, who will serve as the 115th President of our storied Association. Mateja is an established white collar trial lawyer with a particular focus on healthcare fraud and securities enforcement. He is a former Department of Justice (DOJ) prosecutor, at one point responsible for all of the DOJ's white-collar operations, as well as the day-to-day workings of its corporate fraud task force. Mateja also served as Special Counsel for Health Care Fraud, overseeing all the DOJ's healthcare fraud enforcement. He is currently a partner at the Dallas office of Sheppard Mullin. Mateja's accolades and honors barely begin to tell the story of his career as an attorney. In truth, Mateja has only ever wanted to do one thing-try cases. He real- ized as much early on as a baby lawyer working in Dallas. To chase that goal, he left Dallas and headed to Lubbock to serve as a federal prosecutor. There Mateja got exactly what he wanted, as he rode circuit across Texas trying cases. After some time as a fed- eral prosecutor and serving in high-ranking positions with the DOJ in Washington D.C., Mateja returned to Dallas, where he has called home ever since. Though Mateja has made his way across Texas and the country during his career, his service to the legal community is mostly deeply rooted in the Lone Star State. In 1997, he served as President of the Texas Young Lawyers Association (TYLA), an office previously held by many lauded attorneys, federal and state judges, and elected officials across this state. As TYLA President, Mateja forged and cultivated friendships that he cherishes to this day. That experience left an indelible mark on him, and it continues to energize Mateja's desire to serve the legal community, locally and at large. Even with an incredibly active trial docket, Mateja assumes the role of DBA President with energetic plans for 2024. While he is less inclined to set stringent, formalistic goals in order to provide flexibility within the member- ship to shape the DBA's collective future, he nevertheless will seek to empower members to effect change. One area he seeks to develop and empha- size is the role of criminal practitioners within the DBA. Though criminal practice can and does differ considerably from civil practice, Mateja believes that more can be done to afford criminal practitioners a more suitable environment within the DBA to col- laborate, socialize, and come together more often with the criminal bar and civil prac- titioners in Dallas. Mateja believes this goal is critically important, and he is confident that he can help with this effort given his hybridized practice and specialty in white collar work, which frequently places him in the criminal, civil, administrative, and regu- -- maIrI _ - I I Im Bill Mateja latory spheres (sometimes all at once). Mateja additionally seeks to optimize the way law firms operate and co-exist by building upon the foundation of the DBA Managing Partners' Forum. The Managing Partners' Forum is a project originally spear- headed by immediate past DBA President Cheryl Camin Murray as an outlet for man- aging partners at firms around Dallas to come together to collaborate and communi- cate. Mateja seeks to ramp up this initiative with further partnerships and additional avenues for networking, communicating, and sharing ideas that will hopefully lead to positive changes to the practice of law in Dallas. When all is said and done, Mateja hopes that his presidency will be impactful on all those involved in the legal industry in Dallas, from the partners at the top to support staff without whom practitioners would not be able to practice. Mateja is a lawyer's lawyer. To him, nothing is more important than being an excellent lawyer in service to clients and the Bar. And he hopes that what he can bring to the DBA are efforts and initiatives that help others achieve that same goal in their careers. No matter where Mateja has been or what he has done-from Dallas to Lubbock to D.C. and back-he has enjoyed bar service and hopes that his past experiences will guide and motivate him during his year at the helm of the DBA. Congratulations to Bill Mateja, as he embarks on his journey as the 115th President of the Dallas Bar Association. The future looks bright as ever for the DBA as it heads into its 151st year. HN Griffin Rubin is an attorney at Sbaiti & Company and can be reached at gsr@sbaitilaw.com. Sylvia Demarest and Edward Cloutman Win 2024 MLK Justice Award BY J. COLLIN SPRING The Reverend Doctor famously said the moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice. But it does not bend on its own. It takes men and women of exceptional courage, honor, and integrity to look at the status quo and demand a better, more equitable world. Every year since 1992, the Dallas Bar Association has given out the Martin Luther 1 King Jr. Justice Award to recognize members of our legal commu- nity who have dedicated Sylvia Dem their careers to helping bend that arc. It is with deep gratitude that the DBA announces Sylvia Demarest and Edward Cloutman as co-recip- ients of the 32nd MLK Justice Award. Demarest grew up in Lake Charles, Louisiana, in a Catholic family of trappers, farmers, and hunting guides. After Edward CI graduating from the University of Texas School of Law, Sylvia Demarest immediately turned her attention to civil rights. At the early age of 27, she was named Executive Director of the Dallas Legal Services Foundation, where she was an integral part of the litigation that would lead the City of Dallas to shift from electing its City Councilors At-Large to electing them by geo- graphic district-a historic milestone for people of color in Dallas politics. She entered private practice work- ing with Windle Turley, moving up the ranks to become a member of the firm's leadership before opening her own firm some six years later. There, she would go on to represent victims of sexual abuse in lawsuits against the Catholic Church, one of which would result in a historic $119 mil- lion verdict in 1997. Throughout her career, she has been actively involved in the legal community, serving as President of the Dallas Trial Lawyers' Association in 1983 and on the Board of Directors for the Texas Trial Lawyers' Association from 1985 to 1990. She has been a dedicated men- tor to the future generation of law- yers, serving as an adjunct faculty member at SMU Dedman School of Law teaching Trial Advocacy as well as being a member of the national faculty of the National Institute of Trial Advocacy. Cloutman, the son of two school teachers and another native of Lake Charles, earned his J.D. at Louisiana State University. He came to Dallas in the second year of his practice as part of a fellowship program where he represented the indigent. When he came to Dallas, he began working at the Dallas Legal Services Foundation. Demarest was his direct supervisor. Together, they worked on a number of lawsuits aimed at improving the lives of Dallas' least fortu- nate-suing the county arest for food stamp program violations, suing the jails for overcrowding, and seeking to end dispa- rate racial treatment of black prisoners in Dallas. Cloutman's dedication to civil rights would continue throughout his career working as one of Dallas' preeminent labor and employment attorneys. He has been outman recognized by publica- tions ranging from Texas Monthly to Best Lawyers in America for his work in labor and employment, which he has been Board Certified in since 1975-the first year that the Labor and Employment certification was available. Although their contributions to the field of civil rights are legion, Demarest and Cloutman are perhaps best known for their work on Tasby v. Estes, the seminal Dallas school deseg- regation case. As Cloutman recalled in an oral history interview given to the University of North Texas' Portal to Texas History, everything about the dis- trict was separate, but not equal-from teacher recruitment, teacher assign- ment, administrator assignment, pay for teachers and administrators...Books and supplies were materially different, dependent on the race of the kids in the school. Although racial segregation of schools was struck down by the United States Supreme Court some 15 years prior, good geographers that had malice in their hearts had developed ways to keep white children separate from chil- dren of color. Despite Brown v. Board of Education, most schools through- out DISD were either 90 percent or more white students or 90 percent or more students of color. Sam Tasby, an African American father of six, went to continued on page 18 Inside ___ 8 2023 Developments in the Securities Regulation - __ 1 8 Unlocking the SEC's New Private Fund Adviser Rules 24 DBA Inspiring Women 13 28 Meet Your Allied Bar Presidents for 2024 RENEW YOUR MEMBERSHIP DUES Don't risk being dropped from the DBA membership! Renew TODAY in order to continue receiving all your member benefits including FREE online CLE programs and Committee Communications. Look for an email reminder with links to renew your Dues online. Thank you for your support of the Dallas Bar Association! r I y lC

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