Bell Nunnally Senior Associate Mason G. Jones and Summer Associate Genesis Paita authored the Texas Lawyer article “In-House Attorney Immunity: Gray Area of Legal & Business Advice.” The piece examines a recent Texas Fifteenth Court of Appeals decision addressing whether attorney immunity protects in-house counsel whose work can involve overlapping legal and business advice.

Jones and Paita discuss In re Frank Jackson, in which the court held that attorney immunity protected an in-house general counsel from personal liability arising from advice concerning the termination of a company executive. The authors note that the decision “appears to be the first Texas appellate decision expressly applying attorney immunity to an in-house general counsel.”

Discussing the court’s conduct-specific analysis, Jones and Paita explain, “The fact that an in-house lawyer may perform some nonlegal work does not eliminate immunity for separate conduct undertaken in a legal capacity.” They add that attempts to characterize counsel differently do not necessarily change the analysis: “Removing a legal title does not erase factual allegations and incorporated documents showing that the defendant was acting as counsel.”

The authors conclude that the decision provides guidance for in-house attorneys whose legal advice informs significant business decisions, including the importance of documenting the legal nature of their advice, using titles and roles consistently and distinguishing between legal and business functions.

To read the full article, please click here.