SCOTXblog

This morning’s orders list brought the first grants under the Texas Supreme Court’s new petition rules.

My website has been tracking these new petitions (more on that below), so I’ve been watching for the first grant. My hope had been that the first grants might answer some questions about how the internal process might be working (and, more selfishly, give me some material for my CLE talk in June).

Here is what I’ve been tracking, and where today’s grants fit in.

What we can learn from today's first grants

… a mind’s inner workings are often opaque and its contents not easily partitioned.

A disqualification case with some cautions for appellate lawyers

IN RE ADEEL ZAIDI, A.K. CHAGLA AND PRESTIGE CONSULTING D/B/A TURNAROUND MANAGEMENT GROUP, No. 24-0245

Opinion of the Court

Earlier this month, the Texas Supreme Court issued an attorney-disqualification opinion. The court’s guidance — and its strict rule of disqualification — actually applies to any law firm big enough to employ non-lawyer support staff.

This opinion might make you read Texas e-filing notices a little more carefully. (And the fact pattern here might make you wish that your firm’s lawyers all knew how to make e-filings themselves, rather than delegating that task to staff.)

Read the case note

IOPs vs. “inferred” operating procedures

For a number of years, the Texas Supreme Court published a set of “internal operating procedures” (IOPs) on its website, with a detailed look at the internal process. The most recent update to that document (of which I am aware) was in 2018.¹

Having published that document did not stop the Court from experimenting. As members of the Court had new ideas, or prevailed on their colleagues to revisit older ideas, the actual practice at the Court would change in ways not reflected in the IOPs. (Eventually, the Court removed that 2018 document from its website.)

See my notes on the Court's new memo

New petition rules at the Texas Supreme Court

The big news, really, is that the Texas Supreme Court dramatically changed its petition process in January.

Under the old system, the Court’s discretionary review proceeded in two steps. First, the parties would file a petition seeking to persaude the Court to show some interest. Then the Court would request full merits briefing from both sides. Only after those months of briefing would the Court decide whether to grant review or not.

The new process in Texas is loosely modeled on the petition for certiorari process at the U.S. Supreme Court. But it’s also uniquely different. Each time I read through the redline of the new petition rules, I see some new detail that I’d like to explore. I’ll write about some of those later.

My court-tracking website is being updated to fit this new petition process

The big news, for me, is that I’ve just updated my docket-tracking website to follow cases as they move through the new process.

Get an overview of the new features

“What are the Odds?” updated through 2025

The state bar appellate section invited me to speak in September 2025. As has become my own little Labor Day tradition, I updated my Texas Supreme Court stats and “What are the odds?” slides to include everything through the end of the term on August 31.

These are not only the most recent numbers covering a complete court term, they will be the last ones under the petition for review rules that had been in place since 1997. The Court has officially adopted very different petition rules effective January 1, 2026.¹ So my next presentation about the court stats (in June 2026) will be trying to disentangle the numbers, about the old style of petitions and a half year of the new ones, to see what we can learn about the new system.

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