Sibling Synergy

When Macey Reasoner Stokes and Barrett Reasoner took the stage in 2025 as the first siblings to receive the Anti-Defamation League Southwest’s Karen H. Susman Jurisprudence Award, it was a special honor for Mace and Bear, as they call one another.

Their father, attorney Harry Reasoner—who once received the same distinction—was in attendance. And both he and their mom, also named Macey, have previously been honored with the ADL’s Torch of Liberty Award. The night was made even more meaningful by the fact that the late Karen Susman was a close family friend whose daughter Stokes has known since they were babies.

The Jurisprudence award, like the Torch of Liberty, recognizes a commitment to justice and community service—core values for the Reasoners. “We grew up with parents who gave a lot back to the community and taught us it was your obligation, with all the blessings that you’ve received, that a lawyer should be active in their community,” Stokes says.

While their father earned billion-dollar verdicts in some of the largest antitrust cases in history, he was also an advocate for pro bono work since the 1970s, when he litigated on behalf of prison inmates to protect their right to private mail communications with their lawyers.  

“I remember going down and watching him argue at a hearing in a prisoner case,” Reasoner says. “Even though I was pretty young, I remember thinking that was pretty cool. He explained why it was important, and being around that made it an attractive [pursuit] for both Macey and me.”

In keeping with that example, Stokes, who heads Baker Botts’ appellate section, expanded the pro bono program for civil appeals while serving as chair of the Appellate Section of the State Bar of Texas. And, pro bono, she represented the Texas Access to Justice Foundation, the state’s leading funder of legal aid, to support the state Bar when a group of lawyers sued over their dues.

“They claimed they didn’t want to be paying for certain charitable activities that the Bar was doing. One of those was all the money that goes to legal aid, and luckily, we were able to defeat that,” she says. “Compared to when I started in the ’90s, it seems like there are fewer people that automatically think part of being a lawyer is being involved in your community—or even in the Bar.”

Stokes and Reasoner encourage the opposite to their younger associates. Reasoner, a partner at Gibbs & Bruns, has served on the board of BakerRipley—a nonprofit that supports 500,000 people annually through resources like job training, childcare and immigration legal services at neighborhood centers—for a decade. Before that, as president of the Houston Bar Association, he established a partnership with Communities In Schools of Houston to provide students from at-risk schools with summer internships at law firms. And as chair of the Houston Bar Foundation, the charitable wing of the Houston Bar, he helped raise $1.75 million for the Kay Sim Endowment to fund access to pro bono civil legal services.

He’s also a former board chair of Houston Volunteer Lawyers. “They offer pro bono legal services to those who can’t afford it, so it’s a local version of what my dad was involved in,” Reasoner says.

What stands out to Stokes about her brother is that he’s not only a brilliant trial lawyer, but kind. Even when she thinks back to their childhood fights, she comes to the same conclusion as the lawyers who have, for years, approached her to say how nice he is.

“I’ve had so many people, opposing counsel, tell me, ‘Your brother’s such a great guy; even though he beat me in this case, he was just so professional and good to deal with,’” Stokes says.

Reasoner calls his younger sister a pioneer; she carved out a position as an appellate lawyer at a time when there were few women in that space. “Macey was always incredibly bright even when she was very young,” he says. “In the practice of law, I know a lot of people who are really smart, but who aren’t effective in harnessing that to a good end. Macey has the full package of having that horsepower, but also being somebody who relates to people well. They really like her, and want to be persuaded by what she’s saying. It makes her very effective.”

Both siblings were humbled by their awards lunch—attended by 700 people who raised more than $600,000 for the ADL, another organization the Reasoner family has long supported.

“Antisemitism has always been a problem—and continues to be. I also like the fact that the organization is about being against discrimination of any kind, or hate of any kind,” Stokes says. “It’s always been an important thing to do. But it’s crucial these days.”