Southwest Airlines GC announces retirement

Madeleine Johnson set to leave Feb. 1, 2013

Southwest Airlines will have some pretty big GC shoes to fill in 2013. The airline’s Vice President and General Counsel Madeleine Johnson announced yesterday she will be retiring from the company for which she’s worked for the past five years.

Johnson joined Southwest in 2008, after a celebrated career in law working for the city of Dallas and as an assistant U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Texas.

Read more about Johnson’s career and her time at Southwest.

“Madeleine has been a joy to work with, a ferocious protector of Southwest, and someone who has made incredible contributions to the success of our airline in her relatively short tenure,” Southwest EVP and chief legal and regulatory officer Ron Ricks said in a statement.

As for filling those shoes, Southwest doesn’t have far to look. The company said Mark Shaw, Southwest’s associate general counsel of corporate & transactions, will take over as GC.

"I have great confidence in Mark's abilities and his character as a Leader," Ricks said. "This will be a seamless transition given his history with Southwest and with his colleagues in the General Counsel Department."

Johnson’s retirement will be effective Feb. 1, 2013, when Shaw will take over the role.

Read more InsideCounsel stories about career changes:

One-third of U.S. lawyers are now women

11 noteworthy in-house career moves

PTO director David Kappos will step down in January

Former antitrust chief joins Simpson Thacher

FTC loses general counsel, gains chief privacy officer

DOJ antitrust head to step down

Kim Koopersmith to become first woman chairperson of Akin Gump

Comments

InsideScoop Daily eNewsletter

InsideScoop delivers the latest-breaking news affecting in-house counsel. Get the latest business trends, current corporate litigation, labor developments, technology initiatives and more — FREE. Sign up now!

You have been subscribed! You will receive a confirmation email soon.

See the entire list of InsideCounsel eNewsletters.

Resource Library


Bring the Benefits of Decision Tree Analysis to Your Everyday...

In this on-demand webinar, learn how to counter the challenges of litigation with predictive analytics...

13 Things to do Now to Reduce Risk and Avoid...

We have developed best practices for lowering your e-Discovery costs, shortening the length of your...

7 Simple Strategies for Improving Legal Fee Budgeting Certainty

Understanding the legal fee budgeting paradigm and following seven simple strategies will help you control...

Complimentary White Paper: Best Practices for Meeting Critical eDiscovery Challenges

Packed with practical advice, this white paper discusses best practices for meeting eDiscovery challenges across...

Complimentary White Paper "Key Considerations for Collection Methodologies and Resources"

This white paper addresses the need for companies to reevaluate their current collection policies in...

Moving Matters In-House: How Technology Enables Legal In-Sourcing

Strategically shifting more matters to in-house counsel has proven to be an effective strategy to...

5 Ways to Promote Responsible Content Sharing

Find out five ways that organizations can promote responsible sharing of content among employees by...

Reducing the Costs of eDiscovery from Collection to Court!

Predictive coding is only one of many ways organizations can make eDiscovery faster, cheaper and...

Discovery Shifts to the Cloud

Adoption of Cloud computing continues to gain momentum. How can IT and Legal Teams avoid...

Lower Your Total Cost of Ownership

With the deployment of Proofpoint Enterprise Archive, organizations have realized significant cost savings in automating...

View All »

Advertisement. Closing in 15 seconds.