Stephen Townsend Email & Phone Number

Beaumont/Port Arthur, Texas Area

Board Certified Labor & Employment Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization.Areas of Practice: Personal Injury & Wrongful Death; Wills, Estates, & Probate; Business & Business Litigation; Labor & Employment; Real Estate; Banking; Contracts; General Litigation.* Handle state and federal litigation for employment and wage discrimination cases on behalf of employees. Participate in collective bargaining for police officers. Counsel local business on best employment practices.* Manage litigation for multiple types of cases, specifically automobile accidents, contract disputes, employment discrimination, wrongful death, personal injury, consumer protection, and civil rights.* Draft, negotiate, and litigate contracts in various subject areas, including construction projects, banking service contracts, commercial sales, and non-competition and non-solicitation employment agreements. * Draft real estate documents, including commercial and residential leases, deeds of trusts, vendor liens, warranty deeds, and property owners’ association documentation.* Advise and create business entities for clients. Draft corporate documentation.* Handle probates of estates, modifications of trusts, and drafting of estate planning documents.* Assist and counsel local governmental entities on a wide range of legal topics, including real estate, condemnation, employment issues, and appraisal disputes.

Beaumont, Texas

Areas of Practice: Business Litigation; Contract Drafting & Litigation; Labor & Employment; Trade Secrets; Intellectual Property Litigation; Municipalities; Drainage District Legal Issues; Real Estate; and Personal Injury.* Handled firm’s employment docket, including state and federal litigation discrimination and wage cases. Counseled corporate and local government employers with employment issues, drafted employment and non-compete agreements, and developed and implemented employment policies and procedures.* Drafted, negotiated, and litigated contracts in various subject areas, including governmental entity construction projects, employment agreements, service agreements, business real estate transactions, and requests for proposals for government projects. * Performed trials and arbitrations in cases involving breaches of contract, commercial contract interpretation, landlord-tenant disputes and personal injury.* Assisted with firm's intellectual property/ trade secret litigation.

Proudly provided legal representation for clients in areas of civil litigation, including: Employment Discrimination; Civil Rights Violations; Worker’s Compensation Retaliation/Wrongful Termination; Railroad Worker Injuries (FELA); Maritime Injuries (Jones Act & Unseaworthiness Claims); Personal Injury; 18 Wheeler/Automobile Accidents; Wrongful Death; Toxic Tort Injuries; and Hurricane Claims. * Managed litigation for multiple types of cases, specifically automobile accidents, contract disputes, employment discrimination, personal injury, consumer protection, misdemeanor criminal offenses, wrongful death cases, and civil rights.* Headed jury and bench trials for claims of Deceptive Trade Practices Act violations, personal injury, eighteen-wheeler accidents, unlawful business liens, and breaches of contract.

Worked as the IT Director, managing offices across the Untitled States, while attending Law School in Houston (90 miles away) every night. Began trying cases when received third-year provisional bar card. Legal Experience:* Handled litigation for personal injury claims and contract disputes.* Tried refinery premise liability injury case to a successful jury verdict in favor of Plaintiff.* Drafted contracts, commercial real property sale documentation, and service agreements.Technology Experience:* Managed trial technologies for multi-million-dollar trials.* Managed information technology department for entire law firm with offices across the United States. Budgeted, researched, implemented, and managed projects for software and hardware integration. Negotiated and managed vendor service contracts. Supervised employees.* Worked with media outlets, including 60 minutes and Court TV, on coordinating case multimedia with their programming.

* Managed helpdesk employee activities and schedules.* Supervised helpdesk support for over 800 users in four locations.* Reported to CIO trends in user complaints.* Streamlined helpdesk call procedures.* Followed up on outstanding tickets to insure helpdesk efficiency.

General Administration* Managed IT employee activities and schedules.* Implemented, administered and maintained: Novell NetWare 5 servers, Windows 2000/NT servers, FTP servers, Fortis Servers, GroupWise 5.5, SQL 2000 server.* Functioned as key contact for vendors and professional consultants.* Coordinated helpdesk support for over 200 local and 100 external users.* Trained users and IT employees in the use of software.Projects and Accomplishments* Acted as strategic technical director in five year document imaging project.* Planned and executed computer presentation projects for multi-million dollar trials and mediations.* Streamlined accounting processes resulting in account closing and reporting times being reduced by 50%.* Budgeted, researched, implemented and managed projects for software and hardware integration.* Reformed firm’s disaster recovery procedures.

* Maintained and repaired diesel and gasoline engines.* Performed troubleshooting on vehicle systems.* Received the Army Achievement Medal.

* Performed daily operations and maintenance on databases in a mainframe environment.* Provided helpdesk support for over 400 users.* Managed daily operations of users and jobs on mainframe environment.* Developed Visual Basic front-end for Access databases.* Constructed batch programs for report generation and mainframe maintenance.* Created COM objects to interact with SQL 2000 databases.Webmaster* Designed and created internal and public web pages.* Restructured and redesigned the web pages of Johnston Pump (www.johnston-pump.com) and PACO Pump (www.paco-pump.com).* Involved as a key team programmer in e-commerce conversion project.* Assisted in the conversion from a mainframe environment to Oracle.

Bachelor Of Business Administration (B.B.A.), Management Information Systems, General

Activities and Societies: * Studied Visual Basic, HTML programming, network design, database design and management, SQL, PC hardware.

Doctorate Of Jurisprudence, Law

Activities and Societies: * Technology Officer of South Texas College of Law’s inaugural Military Law Students Association.

Mba, Business Administration

Activities and Societies: * Inducted into Beta Gamma Sigma Honor Society for Collegiate Schools of Business. * M.B.A. with a concentration.