About Marc Ramirez
Marc Ramirez is a veteran journalist currently based in the Dallas-Fort Worth area of Texas. A graduate of the University of Notre Dame and the University of California-Berkeley, he has worked for The Seattle Times, Phoenix New Times, The Dallas Morning News, USA TODAY and The Wall Street Journal. In his spare time, he is an avid food and drink enthusiast. Marc is also a dedicated fan of the Seattle Seahawks.
Articles written by Marc Ramirez
Promoting Pro Bono
Philip Vickers inspires colleagues to help others move forward in lifeAt a Fort Worth nursing home for low-income people, one of the residents, a disabled man in his 50s, met a woman and married her, then watched as she moved to a different facility and began dating someone else. He wanted a divorce, but he was short on funds. That’s when he approached Legal Aid of Northwest Texas. The case fell to Philip Vickers, a litigator who had been wanting to take on some pro bono work. “That’s how I got started,” he says. Growing up in Brady, a hunting community …
After the Storm
Local law firms pitched in to help Houston recover from Harvey’s wallopLast summer, the Texas legal community came together with many Houstonians to revive the city battered by Hurricane Harvey, which slammed into southeast Texas in August 2017. Then—as if it had found a place to nest—it stalled, dumping as much as 60 inches of rain even while the gusts subsided. “We’ve been through many hurricanes,” says Houston business litigator Robin Gibbs of Gibbs & Bruns, “but we’ve never had one that just sat on us. It filled this area up like a …
The Deal-Maker
Rodrigo Dominguez’s negotiating skills are helping change the energy game in Latin AmericaRodrigo Dominguez remembers sitting at the kitchen table as a teenager in Veracruz, Mexico, talking with his father, who owned a construction company, about career options. Dominguez said he was thinking about business school. “Are you sure about that?” his dad asked. “You’re always trying to cut deals and negotiate, and you always tend to find the middle ground to make people agree. That might be a good trait for a lawyer.” At Mexico City’s Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de …
A Better Person
Jason Steed on making time to lend a helping handJason Steed loved being an English professor. But when the geographic limitations of the academic job market left him frustrated, he changed course. It wasn’t as sharp a detour as one might think. As a literature instructor, he parsed the language. In appellate law, he says, “you do what literature professors do—except with statutes and contracts, not poems and short stories.” He also does pro bono work—a lot of it. At least 200 hours annually, and one year he hit the 500-hour mark. …
Seeing the Big Picture
When a charity needs a little help, four Beaumont attorneys are ready to jump in and get it 'from here to there'For four lawyers at MehaffyWeber in Beaumont, it was a typical week. Sandra Clark was preparing to file a probate litigation motion before meeting with the scholastic foundation at Lamar University, where she sits on the board. Between prepping for depositions in a construction defect case, Michele Y. Smith was preparing to volunteer for the annual Spindletop Spin bike ride, which raises funds for legal-aid programs. Barbara Barron, working on a temporary restraining order, spent her lunch …
Turning Lives Around
Jeff Barnes fights for refugees and troubled teensJeff Barnes is used to representing employers in disputes with lots of money at stake. But in the pro bono cases he’s handled for a decade—helping asylum-seekers as well as an agency that serves teens in crisis—his clients have much more to lose. Early in his career at Houston-based Baker Botts, he made contact with YMCA International, which helps people seeking refuge in the U.S. “The asylum cases were extraordinarily rewarding,” he says. “Usually, lawsuits are about money, and …
The Dronemaster
How ‘gadget nerd’ Coyt Johnston became an expert in unmanned vehiclesThe first time Coyt Johnston piloted a drone, he was assigned to the mission by his stepmom, in preparation for his sister’s wedding on California’s Catalina Island. His stepmother had won a drone in a raffle, and hoped Johnston could mount his GoPro camcorder on it for cool photos. He got plenty. And then he got hooked. “It was like tapping into a perspective that’s always there, but you just don’t realize it,” says the 41-year-old professional liability attorney at Dallas’ …
Andrew B. Sommerman Wants You to Vote
Why the Dallas attorney tackled Texas’ tough election-ID lawAndrew B. Sommerman believes every nun should be allowed to vote. Well, sure. Who would think otherwise? The state of Texas, it turns out, if they don’t have a specific form of ID, such as a driver’s license, U.S. passport or certificate of citizenship. That can be a problem for some nuns who don’t drive or have other accepted forms of identification. It can also be an obstacle for low-income voters who don’t own cars, and for Texas women who change their names when they get married or …
Land Lover
Natural resources attorney Tom Paterson wrangles cattle—and government agencies—to manage his ranch and environsTom Paterson had just put 400 head of cattle on his land south of Luna, New Mexico, when Arizona’s largest-ever wildfire crossed the border and took a turn toward his ranch. He awoke to the smell of smoke, the sight of tanker trucks hosing water on the rooftops of his property, and the challenge of moving cattle to safety. The job required driving the cattle to safe pasture land, where Paterson gathered the herd together. “I put some hay on the back of my four-wheeler and they followed …
Not Playing the Safe Card
For healthcare lawyer Richard Cheng, that’s the one to avoidAs a boy, Richard Cheng sometimes thought about becoming a lawyer. Then he ruled it out. “It wasn’t really encouraged in the home,” says Cheng, whose dad thought it was a bad idea. He wasn’t the only one. “I had this conversation with an older Chinese gentleman; each of us was told by our father, ‘Don’t bother with law. Nobody in their right mind will ever hire you as an attorney because of being Asian-American.’” Instead, Cheng became an occupational therapist, working at …
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