The Franklin Jones Best CLE Article Award

2020 Recipient – Michael J. Ritter

For 2020, the award goes to Michael J. Ritter for Texas’s Transitioning Judiciary: A Few Appellate & Ethical Considerations.

Michael J. Ritter is a staff attorney at the 4th Court of Appeals in San Antonio, where he works on over a hundred civil and criminal appeals each year. He is double board certified by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization, in Civil Appellate Law & Criminal Appellate Law. He is also the Immediate Past President of the Texas Association of Appellate Court Attorneys. He has been recognized among the Best Appellate Lawyers by San Antonio Magazine and SA Scene Magazine, and among the Top 40 lawyers “On the Rise” by the ABA’s Young Lawyers Division in 2019.

Michael graduated with honors from the University of Texas School of Law and cum laude from Trinity University. He served as a member of the Texas Law Review, which published two of his student notes, one of which received TLR’s Best Constitutional Law Note Award; and as a Notes Editor on the Review of Litigation, which published another one of his notes that received the Ridley–Ray Best Note Award. During law school, Michael published nine student notes in journals at UT Law and in other publications. As a practitioner, he has continued to publish articles, which have been cited by the Supreme Court of Texas, Texas courts of appeal, and a federal district court, and by lawyers practicing before those courts.

Michael has served as the Chair of the San Antonio LGBT Bar Association, Chair of the LGBT Law Section of the San Antonio Bar Association, and an at-large council member of the LGBT Law Section of the State Bar of Texas. He has also served on the board of directors for the San Antonio Young Lawyers Association & Foundation, and the Texas Young Lawyers Association. Michael’s innovative bar projects have received 1st Place Diversity Project from TYLA, Outstanding Partnership Award from the State Bar of Texas, and an Award of Achievement from the ABA. Michael has also served on the board of directors for the San Antonio AIDS Foundation, and Driving Single Parents, which provides free cars to single parents in need.

Michael thanks June Moynihan of the San Antonio Bar Association for the nomination, Professor Lonny Hoffman for his guidance in helping to publish this CLE Article (which was published in part by the Houston Law Review, in part by the Litigation Section’s Advocate, and in full by the Appellate Section’s Appellate Advocate), his husband Dilshan for his neverending support, and the Texas Bar College for promoting excellence among the bar in providing legal services to the public.

2019

Matthew Kolodoski, Dallas
Eliot Shavin, Dallas
Private Prisons: Constitutional Litigation Against Non-State Defendants

2018

Hon. Mike Engelhart, Houston
Sarah Kathryn Foster, Houston
Procedure for Enforcing Foreign State, Federal and Foreign Country Judgments in Texas

2017

Shelly L. Skeen, Dallas
State of Rights Post – Obergefell

2016

Justice Jane Bland, Houston
Laura Prather, Austin
Bullies Beware: Bullies Beware: Safeguarding Constitutional Rights through Anti-SLAPP in Texas

2015

Clyde J. “Jay” Jackson, III, Houston
Texas Supreme Court Update

2010

Richard R. Orsinger, San Antonio
Practicing Family Law In a Depressed Economy Part I: Your Law Practice and
Your Clients – Part II: The Economy

2004

Steve Akers, Dallas
Trustee Selection; Retaining Strings Without Getting Strung-Up

2000

Eric E. Sigsbey, Midland

1999

David H. Pace, Dallas

1998

David B. Young, Austin

1997

Kathryn Hinkel, Dallas

1996

Scott Rothenberg

1995

Walter P. Wolfram, Amarillo