After law school, Don served as a law clerk for Justice Priscilla Owen on the Texas Supreme Court.
He then began his private practice as a litigator for Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz in New York. While at Wachtell, Don worked on a variety of commercial disputes involving mergers (both hostile and friendly), contract and insurance disputes, business torts, securities fraud, bankruptcy, antitrust law, and regulatory investigations. He was a member of the trial team in IBP, Inc. v. Tyson Foods, a landmark merger case in the Delaware Court of Chancery, and also worked on the property insurance litigation supporting the rebuilding of the World Trade Center.
In 2003, Don returned to Texas to serve as an Assistant Solicitor General (ASG) in the Texas Office of the Attorney General. ASGs are members of the Solicitor General’s division, which handles the State’s most complex appeals and ensures that state agencies take strong legal positions. As an ASG, Don routinely served as lead counsel in appellate matters. He handled cases about the construction and validity of Texas statutes and also defended the conduct of state officials in cases involving constitutional challenges. He argued three times before the Texas Supreme Court, four times before the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, and several times before other Texas appellate courts. He also served as the office’s Lead ASG responsible for briefing the three Supreme Court merits appeals resulting from Texas’s most recent congressional redistricting.
University of Texas School of Law
University of Texas at Austin