The Franklin Jones Best CLE Article Award

John G. Browning has been a litigator in Texas and Oklahoma for the past 35 years, including as a partner in several national law firms. Prior to returning to private practice, he served as a justice on Texas’ largest appellate court, the Fifth District Court of Appeals in Dallas. Justice Browning is also the Distinguished Jurist in Residence and Professor of Law at Faulkner University’s Thomas Goode Jones School of Law in Montgomery, Alabama. He also serves as Chair of the Institute for Law and Technology at The Center for American and International Law, as president-elect of Scribes, the American Society of Legal Writers, and as a trustee of both the Texas Supreme Court Historical Society and the Texas Appellate Hall of Fame.

Justice Browning is the author of five law books, including The Lawyer’s Guide to Social Networking (West 2010), the Social Media Litigation Practice Guide (West 2014), and (with Professor Jan Jacobowitz) Legal Ethics and Social Media: A Practitioner’s Handbook (ABA 2017; 2^nd edition 2022). He has also contributed chapters to at least 10 other books, and has authored nearly 50 law review articles as well as hundreds of other articles in legal journals. Justice Browning’s work has been cited in judicial opinions in state and federal courts all over the country, in practice guides in 11 states, and in more than 400 law review articles. A nationally recognized thought leader on technology and the law, Justice Browning has been quoted in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, TIME magazine, USA Today, the ABA Journal, Law.com, Law360, Business Insider, Bloomberg Law, WIRED and many other publications.

Justice Browning earned his bachelor’s degrees from Rutgers University (where he was a National Merit Scholar and member of Phi Beta Kappa) and his J.D. from the University of Texas School of Law. His writing has received many awards, including 4 Burton Awards for Distinguished Achievement in Legal Writing; the DRI’s G. Duffield Smith Outstanding Publication of the Year Award; the Oklahoma Bar’s Maurice Merrill Golden Quill Award for Best Legal Article; the Texas Bar Foundation’s Outstanding Law Review Article Award; the Texas Bar College’s Franklin Jones Award for CLE Article of the Year; and the Houston Bar Foundation’s Outstanding Legal Article of the Year Award. Justice Browning has also been recognized with the Texas Bar’s highest honor, the President’s Certificate of Merit, and the Dallas Bar’s highest honor, the Presidential Citation. In July 2022, Justice Browning’s work was honored with the ABA Silver Gavel Award for Media and the Arts. In addition, he has been honored with lifetime achievement awards for his contributions in the areas of legal writing, legal ethics, professionalism, continuing legal education, and litigation.

Justice Browning serves as chair of the State Bar of Texas Taskforce for Responsible AI and the Law. He is the author of multiple articles on artificial intelligence and its implications for the legal profession.