Employment Lawyer Awards and Recognition in Dallas, TX | Carter Law Firm

Every lawyer’s website has a wall of badges. Almost none of them tell you what the badges mean, and some of those logos can be bought outright.

So here’s the full list of what our attorneys have been recognized for, along with how each award works: who votes, what the criteria are, how many lawyers make the cut, and whether money changes hands anywhere in the process. Where an honor comes from an organization that charges dues, we say so. You can decide for yourself what it’s worth.

Thomson Reuters Super Lawyers and Rising Stars

Amy Carter: Super Lawyers (Texas), 2017 through 2025

Amy Carter: Rising Stars, 2007 through 2013

Heather V. Davis: Rising Stars, 2021 through 2025

Hon. Erin Nowell: Rising Stars, 2015 through 2017

Super Lawyers runs a multiphase selection process that starts with peer nomination. A lawyer either gets formally nominated by another lawyer or gets flagged by the research department, and from there Thomson Reuters evaluates each candidate against 12 separate indicators of peer recognition and professional achievement. Candidates with the highest point totals go to a blue ribbon panel, where highly rated attorneys score their peers inside their own practice area. No more than 5 percent of lawyers in a state make the Super Lawyers list in a given year. Rising Stars, which is limited to lawyers who are under 40 or in their first ten years of practice, caps at 2.5 percent.
Lawyers cannot buy their way onto either list. That point has been litigated, and the record was clear that there is no purchase requirement and no quid pro quo attached to being evaluated or listed.
What matters here is the pattern rather than any single year. Amy has been on the Texas Super Lawyers list nine years running, after seven consecutive years as a Rising Star before that. Heather has been named a Rising Star five years in a row. Hon. Erin Nowell, who served as Justice of the Texas Fifth District Court of Appeals from 2019 through 2024 and serves as Of Counsel to the firm, was a Rising Star for three years before taking the bench. Peer recognition that repeats year after year is harder to explain away than a one-time mention.

Best Lawyers in America, 2026

Kassi (Kathryn) Yukevich: Best Lawyers 2026, Commercial Litigation and Government Relations Practice

Best Lawyers has been running on peer review since 1981, and it is the strictest process on this page. Nominations come from someone other than the nominee. Currently recognized lawyers in the same practice area and region then submit confidential evaluations, and finalists get checked for good standing with their local bar. In the most recent cycle, close to 30,000 lawyers submitted more than 3.4 million confidential evaluations covering roughly 130,000 vetted nominees. About 5 percent of practicing U.S. attorneys hold a Best Lawyers recognition.

 

Best Lawyers accepts no fees for consideration or inclusion at any stage. You cannot pay to be listed, and you cannot pay to be listed higher.

 

Kassi runs litigation at Carter Law Group, so once a case moves past the administrative phase, she is the attorney driving it. She trained at Harvard Law, served as Counsel to United States Senator Kamala Harris advising on Supreme Court confirmations and Senate impeachment procedure, then litigated at Elias Law Group and McKool Smith before joining us. The Commercial Litigation and Government Relations recognition reflects that background. Best Lawyers lists her under her full first name, Kathryn.

D Magazine Best Lawyers in Dallas

Amy Carter: Best Personal Injury Attorney, 2020 and 2021

Also listed in: D Magazine’s Tort (Plaintiff): Personal Injury, Product and Medical Liability directory

D Magazine builds this list by contacting thousands of licensed Dallas-area lawyers from its database and asking them to nominate attorneys whose work they have personally witnessed. That deliberately includes co-counsel, lawyers seen in court, and opposing counsel, which means the people on the other side of your cases get a vote. Nominations then go to an anonymous panel of experienced local practitioners plus D Magazine editors, who verify bar standing and finalize the list.
Lawyers cannot pay to be on it. D Magazine’s editorial staff finalizes the list before the sales department ever invites winners to buy profiles or ads, and the editors don’t know who purchased a profile until the issue is in final production. Whether an attorney advertises has no effect on selection.

Amy earned this one in the practice area that built the firm. She spent decades trying complex pharmaceutical, product liability, and mass tort cases at firms including Baron & Budd and Williams Kherkher Hart Boundas before founding Carter Law Group in 2019. That experience is why we still take products liability and premises liability cases on referral from other attorneys, and why we can handle claims that combine several legal theories at once.

D Magazine Best Lawyers Under 40

Heather V. Davis: 2021 and 2025

Same publisher, tighter field. Nominating lawyers are asked which attorneys under 40, of those whose work they have seen firsthand, they would rank among the current best. Each voter can name up to two lawyers outside their own firm and one inside it. Nominees have to be under 40 for the entire award year, licensed with no disciplinary history, and practicing in Texas for at least five years. D Magazine logs voter IP addresses and investigates suspicious ballot patterns, and it has pulled people off the list for ballot stuffing.

 

Heather was named in 2021 and again in 2025. In between, she built out the firm’s pre-litigation practice, served as lead counsel and public spokesperson on the Dallas World Aquarium giant otter cases, and published an article in the Dallas Bar Association’s Headnotes on procedural issues in labor and employment litigation. She also runs the firm as Chief Operating Officer.

 

If you want to talk with someone about your case, call us at (214) 390-4173. The consultation is free.

National Trial Lawyers Top 40 Under 40

Heather V. Davis: Top 40 Under 40

The National Trial Lawyers is an invitation-only organization founded in 2008. Selection for Top 40 Under 40 runs on peer nomination plus third-party research, weighing reputation among peers and the judiciary, trial results and verdicts, and leadership in other trial lawyer organizations. Honorees have to be 40 or younger at selection and generally need at least three years practicing as a civil plaintiff or criminal defense lawyer.

 

One honest distinction: National Trial Lawyers membership carries annual dues. That makes it different from Super Lawyers, Best Lawyers, and the D Magazine lists, where no money is involved at any point. The nomination and vetting are real, and we’re glad Heather was recognized. We’d just rather explain how it works than let a logo do the talking.

Texas Women Rainmakers

Amy Carter: Featured attorney

Texas Women Rainmakers is an independent nonprofit built by Texas plaintiffs’ attorneys to connect female lawyers at every stage of their careers, with mentorship and an annual CLE program that draws more than 175 participants. There are no membership fees.

 

This isn’t a ranked award, and we’re not going to present it as one. Being featured by Texas Women Rainmakers means other women trial lawyers in this state know Amy’s work and point to it. For a female-owned plaintiffs’ firm where every attorney is a woman, that kind of standing inside the community matters to us as much as any list.

Better Business Bureau Rating

Carter Law Group: BBB A rating (not accredited)

BBB scores businesses on a 100-point scale that translates to letter grades from A+ down to F, using an algorithm that weighs 13 factors. Complaint volume and resolution carries by far the most weight, worth up to 90 points, and BBB looks at complaints filed over the previous three years along with how quickly and effectively the business responded. The rest comes from time in business, transparency about ownership and policies, truthful advertising, and clean licensing and government-action records.

 

Worth knowing: BBB accreditation is a separate, voluntary, paid program, and a business can hold a high rating without it. We aren’t accredited. The A rating is what the algorithm produced on its own.

Law School Honors and Credentials

Recognition that comes before a lawyer ever tries a case still tells you something.

 

Amy Carter: J.D. with honors, University of Texas School of Law, 1997, Order of the Coif. Admitted in Texas, California, and Pennsylvania, plus the Northern and Eastern Districts of Texas.

 

Heather V. Davis: J.D. with honors, SMU Dedman School of Law, 2014. Order of Barristers, and Managing Editor of the International Law Review.

 

Kassi Yukevich: J.D., Harvard Law School, cum laude.

 

Hon. Erin Nowell: J.D., University of Texas School of Law, 2003.

What These Awards Actually Reflect

Awards are a proxy. Here’s the thing they’re a proxy for.

 

We’ve tried four cases to verdict in the last two calendar years. Most employment lawyers in Texas will file the administrative charge, work the process, and settle for whatever the defendant offers at mediation. If the defendant won’t move, the case quietly dies. That’s the norm, and it’s the reason peer recognition for trial work is worth reading closely: other lawyers know which firms actually go.

 

The case history behind these lists includes a $42,608,300 products liability jury verdict, an $8,000,000 products liability verdict, a $1,048,100 racial discrimination verdict, and a $4.5 million defective product settlement, with more than $100 million in total client compensation across the firm’s history. You can read the full list on our notable case results page.

 

Four women lawyers with recognition across four different awarding bodies, in practice areas ranging from employment discrimination and sexual harassment to equal pay, commercial litigation, and appellate work. That range is why we take cases other employment firms turn down as too complicated, including claims that need more than one legal theory to work.

 

And none of it costs you anything to find out whether you have a case. We work on contingency. No consultation fee, no retainer, no hourly billing, and no out-of-pocket costs. You pay only if we win. What our clients say about working with us is on our testimonials page.

Talk With a Dallas Employment Lawyer

If you were discriminated against, harassed, retaliated against, or assaulted at work, we’d like to hear what happened. The consultation is free and it doesn’t create an attorney-client relationship, so there’s no risk in asking.

Meetings are by appointment only. You can schedule a consultation here, and we’ll get back to you with a time.