About Alison Macor

Alison Macor Articles written 54

A former film critic, Alison Macor has been working as a freelance writer and editor for more than 25 years. She’s followed filmmakers to Sundance and shadowed top breast cancer surgeons and trial lawyers. She’s written for Texas Monthly, Vogue Knitting, Thomson Reuters, and Humanities Texas, to name just a few. Alison also holds a Ph.D. in film history and is the author of three non-fiction books, including the forthcoming Making The Best Years of Our Lives: The Hollywood Classic That Inspired a Nation. She lives in Austin.

Articles written by Alison Macor

Embracing the Ugly Baby

Dick DeGuerin doesn’t sidestep reality when he represents clients like accused murderer/millionaire Robert Durst

In the days following the broadcast of HBO’s six-part documentary The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst, Dick DeGuerin seemed to be everywhere. The series concluded on March 15 with Durst, a millionaire whom DeGuerin successfully defended in a 2003 murder trial, making comments while in the bathroom that were reported by the press as an admission of guilt. DeGuerin derisively refers to the remarks as the “crapper confession” and maintains his client’s innocence. “When you put …

Sweet Deals

Jane Snoddy Smith handles complex, high-stakes real estate transactions—without the high anxiety

Jane Snoddy Smith goes by in a flash of red as she dashes up the marble-and-glass staircase connecting the four floors of Norton Rose Fulbright in downtown Austin. Head of the firm’s U.S. real estate practice group, Smith is in the midst of closing a deal that involves joint venture and acquisition. One party is in Philadelphia, another in New York. Smith and her team were at the office until 11 the previous night, back by 4 this morning. Now it’s midday, and she ducks into a conference …

Tran’s Way

As a kid, Tai C. Tran mapped buildings; now he puts buildings on maps

As a child, Tai Tran made maps to familiarize himself with each new Dallas neighborhood as his parents, immigrants from Vietnam, moved the family around in search of opportunities. So accurate were his detailed drawings that his parents relied on them to navigate the city. “I had a thing about maps,” Tran recalls. “I would know the names of all the streets and how they’re laid out, where all the buildings were and how this community was organized. I liked how things fit. I just loved …

Ricardo G. Cedillo’s Shining Armor

The business litigator has suited up for clients ranging from Blockbuster to Playboy

Like many successful trial lawyers, Ricardo G. Cedillo is a storyteller. He understands how to craft a narrative, build a scene, provide closure. Case in point. The San Antonio attorney is telling the tale of his first memory of meeting his father, Rodolfo, around age 3. “A man showed up,” he says, “and I was introduced to my dad, who had been living and working in the U.S.” Throughout the 1950s, the Cedillo patriarch was a participant in the Bracero Program, established by the U.S. and …

The Judge, the Prosecutor and the Criminal Defense Attorney

They’re all Kerrisa Chelkowski, whose anxious parents bought her a black cowboy hat when she switched from prosecuting accused criminals to defending them

Kerrisa Chelkowski is recovering from a late night. The San Antonio criminal defense attorney worked until midnight in the court building just across the interstate, where she has been moonlighting as a magistrate judge since 2008. Every third weekend, give or take, Chelkowski presides over the district court in her city. “Talk about every day is different,” says Chelkowski. “You see from the very beginning how things work, from the search warrants to talking to the police officers and …

How Hilda Galvan Beat the Odds

The intellectual property litigator didn’t let neighborhood gangs or a naysaying teacher derail her dreams

When she was in grade school in the 1970s, Hilda Galvan told a teacher how much she loved math, and the woman responded, “You’re a girl, so you probably should focus on your reading so you can be a schoolteacher.” Galvan relishes the memory of that conversation. “I became even more obsessed with math, and then science,” she says. She remembers lulling herself to sleep by puzzling over math problems. “Calculus was my favorite. I could go to bed thinking about a calculus problem, and …

The Trailblazer

Lynn Kamin entered family law and made it her own

In the sixth-floor offices of Jenkins & Kamin, at 5 p.m. on a weekday in late May, the energy noticeably shifts as partner Lynn Kamin returns from court. Laura Mireles, Kamin’s longtime assistant, greets her as she enters the hallway en route to her crisply furnished corner office. A small group of associates and paralegals, all female, huddles around Kamin’s desk to discuss that day’s events and their impact on a particular divorce case. They talk strategy and trade folders in …

Persuading in a Raw, Simple Way

Toby Cole advocates for personal injury clients by being himself in the courtroom

Toby Cole appreciates a challenge. But the 39-year-old trial attorney, a partner at Midani, Hinkle & Cole in Houston, had his doubts when he received a call in 2007 from Perry Monroe, the father of deceased United States soldier Christopher Monroe. Nineteen-year-old Christopher had died from injuries sustained at a military security checkpoint in Iraq when he was run over by an armored car operated by employees of Erinys Holdings Ltd., a British security contractor. The vehicle severed …

The Accidental Lawyer

Ophelia Camiña entered law school on a lark, but her success has been far from a fluke

“I tell people I’m the accidental lawyer,” says Ophelia Camiña of Susman Godfrey in Dallas. As a senior theology major at Saint Mary’s College in South Bend, Ind., Camiña had been admitted to divinity school but discovered that scholarship money was unavailable. When a friend mentioned that she was taking the LSAT exam that weekend and suggested Camiña come along, she figured, “Why not?” Camiña did well enough to receive full scholarships to several law schools and eventually …

The Techno-Criminal’s Public Enemy Number One

Matt Yarbrough goes after the crooks that attack the rest of us with bits and bytes

It is late afternoon on a rainy Wednesday as downtown Dallas slogs through another February day. Fifty floors above the street, Matt Yarbrough warms up with a shot of Starbucks caffeine. Although he’s somewhat formally attired in a white dress shirt and maroon patterned tie, his boyish blond looks make him appear even younger than his 39 years.   His youth, though, has not kept him from becoming one of the nation’s foremost experts on computer crimes. Now head of technology litigation in …

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