The Patrick A. Nester Outstanding Achievement in CLE Award

This award honors a Texas attorney for outstanding achievement in CLE as a course director, speaker, author, or creator of a new course and highlights their significant impact on the legal community’s ongoing education and professional development. The award is named in honor of Patrick A. Nester of Driftwood, Texas, who served as the Executive Director of the Texas Bar College until his retirement in 2017. Mr. Nester was also the Director of TexasBarCLE, the State Bar of Texas’ CLE department, from 1986 to 2000 and again from 2005 to 2016.

2025 Recipient – Scott Rothenberg

Scott Rothenberg is a sole practitioner trial and appellate attorney from Houston, Texas. Scott is a member of the Law Practice Management Committee of the State Bar of Texas. Scott has twice served as Director of the State Bar of Texas, as chair of the State Bar of Texas Appellate Section, as chair of the Houston Bar Association Appellate Section, as chair of the State Bar of Texas Continuing Legal Education Committee, as a two-time appointee to the State Bar of Texas Board of Directors Executive Committee, as Small Section Representative to the State Bar Board of Directors, as a multi-term appointee to the State Bar of Texas Continuing Legal Education Committee, as a multi-term chair of the State Bar of Texas Continuing Legal Education Committee, as a multi-year member of the State Bar of Texas Appellate Section Council, as a multi-year member of the Houston Bar Association Appellate Section Council, as a multi-year member of the Texas Bar College, and is a Sustaining Life Fellow of the Texas Bar Foundation. In recent years, Scott served as multi-term panel chair of the District 4-6 grievance committee in Harris County, Texas and was committee chair over all six grievance panels in District 4 (Harris County). Scott assisted in the training of incoming grievance committee members in 2022, 2023, and 2024.

Scott earned his B.A. in Political Science from the State University of New York at Albany in 1982 and his J.D. from the University of Houston College of Law in 1986. To pay for law school, Scott drove a taxicab during the day and parked cars at Astroworld (now a really big patch of grass south of IH-610 and Kirby Drive) at night. He also served as a certified tester of new Nintendo games prior to their release to the public.

Scott has been board certified in civil appellate law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization since December of 1992. Scott has been designated a Texas Appellate Super Lawyer (© 2025 Super Lawyers®, part of Thomson Reuters) many times, most recently from 2009 through the present.

In September of 2021, Scott was awarded the Gene Cavin Award for Excellence in CLE by the State Bar of Texas. In June of 2020, Scott was awarded a Presidential Certificate of Merit by the State Bar of Texas for his many contributions in the areas of continuing legal education and social media communication. In May of 2019, Scott received the 2019 Pat Nester Innovation in Professional Development Award from the State Bar of Texas Continuing Legal Education Committee. In 2012, Scott received the State Bar of Texas Continuing Legal Education Department’s Standing Ovation Award for his lifetime contributions to continuing legal education in the State of Texas. In 1999, Scott received the State Bar of Texas President’s Award in Appreciation for Outstanding Contributions through Distinguished Service to the Lawyers of Texas. In 1994, Scott was honored by the College of the State Bar of Texas for writing the Outstanding Continuing Legal Education Article of the Year, “Advanced Legal Research – 15 Tips and 20 TRAPs.”

Despite authoring and/or presenting all or part of over 160 continuing legal education articles, Scott’s proudest accomplishment is the loving relationship that he has with Lisa, his wife and life partner of 37 years, and their four sons– Daniel, Director of Proteomics at BioNTech SE in Cambridge, Mass., and a PhD graduate from the David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Jared, a mathematics teacher and assistant varsity baseball coach at Spring Branch Memorial High School; Benjamin, Manager of Marketing Communications at OppFi; and Jacob, a graduate of the University of Houston, employed in the hospitality industry at the River Oaks Country Club in Houston, Texas.