Dallas federal Judge Barbara Lynn has shattered many legal industry glass ceilings, impacted the careers of hundreds of Texas lawyers and handled some of the biggest and most important trials in North Texas over the past quarter century. 

Last week, Judge Lynn, the first woman in history to be the chief judge of the Northern District of Texas and widely praised as one of the best trial judges in the U.S., stepped away from public service to join Lynn Pinker Hurst & Schwegmann, the law firm founded three-decades ago by her husband, where she will focus on mediating complex and large-dollar disputes and advising lawyers involved in bet-the-company litigation.

“I’m still energetic,” Judge Lynn, who turns 73 later this month, said in an interview with The Texas Lawbook. “I’m looking forward to new challenges and the next stage.”

If the past is any evidence, she will find new precedents to set, forge new paths for others to follow and set higher bars for others to reach, according to the lawyers who know her best.

“Judge Lynn was in the first wave of women lawyers [in the 1970s and 1980s] who took on big cases in big trials,” said Royal Furgeson, the former dean of the University of North Texas at Dallas College of Law. “She broke the glass ceiling, paving the way for the women who followed.  We always remember those who came first, and Judge Lynn always came first in the best ways.”

Furgeson, a former federal judge, and others say Judge Lynn has already left an indelible stamp on the legal profession in Texas, including how she expertly guided the federal courts through the Covid-19 pandemic.

“When people look back on Judge Lynn’s career, I think they’ll see that she was always looking forward,” U.S. Magistrate Judge Rebecca Rutherford told The Lawbook. “Her legacy will be defined, in part, by her determination to embrace new tools and techniques to improve the practice of law.”

“She never settled for a cut-and-paste approach or did something simply because it had always been done that way — especially if there was a fairer or more efficient alternative,” Judge Rutherford noted. “She was consistently intrigued by technology and its potential to enhance advocacy, and she wasn’t afraid to experiment if it meant better outcomes for litigants and lawyers alike.”

Chad Meacham, the acting U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Texas, said Judge Lynn “has an inherent sense of right and wrong.”

“While Judge Lynn would never substitute her own judgment for the law, when there was discretion she did everything within her power to reach a right and just result,” Meacham said. “No litigant practicing before her could ask, expect or hope for more. Judge Lynn treated everyone with dignity and respect.”

In a separate interview, Mike Lynn, who has been married to the judge for more than five decades, said he is confident that Judge Lynn’s legal career is far from over.

“Barb has more energy than anyone I know,” he said. “She is simply moving into a new stage — Act IV of her career.”

Act I — Breaking Barriers, Challenging Norms 

Born Barbara Golden, she shattered her first glass ceiling while still a teenager when she was among the first class of women admitted into the undergraduate program at the University of Virginia in 1970. 

As a student, Golden tried repeatedly to become the first woman admitted into the Jefferson Literary and Debate Society, a nearly two-century-old organization that is considered one of the oldest and most prestigious clubs at UVA. Woodrow Wilson and Edgar Allan Poe were members.

But each time Golden applied, southern conservative male leaders of the Jeff Society denied her petition because of her gender. 

But Golden had a secret weapon: Her future husband, Mike Lynn, was the group’s vice president at the time.

“One weekend in February, when the anti-women cabal had left for New Orleans to celebrate Mardi Gras and I knew I had the votes with them gone, I called for a vote [of the remaining members] to change the bylaws to admit women,” Mike Lynn told The Lawbook. 

On Feb. 12, 1972, Golden was elected as a member by a single vote.

“That no doubt cemented our relationship,” Mike Lynn said. “There’s a plaque on the wall at UVA celebrating Barb as the Jeff Society’s first woman member. No mention of me, though. I guess it got me married, so that is reward enough.”

The political coup envisioned and executed by the Lynns was a harbinger of things to come.

In 1973, Golden graduated summa cum laude after only three years. The duo attended Southern Methodist University’s Dedman School of Law, where they were on the mock trial team with Houston trial lawyer Rusty Hardin. As her law school days wound down, Lynn and her fellow women classmates noticed that they were receiving very few offers from large Dallas law firms.

“We had this crazy idea that if we worked hard, did well in law school and demonstrated our skills, that we would get job offers,” Judge Lynn told The Texas Lawbook in an interview in 2015. “We noticed that men who graduated well below several of the women in our class were getting offers, while those same law firms were ignoring the female law students.

“One law firm refused to extend me an offer because of my supposed strong connections to New York, even though I had not lived in New York since I was four years old,” she says.

Lynn and her classmates formed a student group at SMU and sued a half-dozen major law firms. Nearly every law firm settled instead of going to trial. And even though the one case that did go to trial was unsuccessful, most law firms in Dallas quickly changed their hiring policies.

“There was definitely fallout from Barb taking this very public stand,” Mike Lynn said. “We were never going to receive offers from any of those law firms that were targeted. But we did OK.”

Act II: The Mentor and the Trial Lawyer

The couple actually tried their first and only case together the summer following Barbara Lynn’s graduation from law school, but before they went to work at their respective law firms.

“I had accepted the job offer from Carrington Coleman but had not yet started, and Mike was in the same position with Akin Gump,” Judge Lynn said.

Then-U.S. District Judge Patrick Higginbotham, who now sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, appointed her to represent a former inmate who sued the sheriff for wrongful imprisonment. She asked her husband to join her as co-counsel.

“I’m not sure either of us knew what we were doing, but we knew our client had a definite cause of action,” Judge Lynn said.

Their client won the case when the Fifth Circuit ruled that the sheriff had kept the inmate longer than permitted, and the Lynns’ client was awarded damages.

Carrington Coleman extended a job offer to Barbara Lynn in 1976, making her the first woman lawyer at the firm. 

“We had a firm policy to never hire students right out of law school,” Jim Coleman, one of the firm’s founders and a legendary trial attorney, told The Lawbook in an interview in 2015. “But once we saw Barbara’s resume and once we met and interviewed her, we eliminated that policy. And it was one of the best decisions we ever made.”

The gender discrimination lawsuit against the law firms, which went to trial after Judge Lynn joined Carrington Coleman, was viewed within the legal community as high risk and politically sensitive. As a result, many women lawyers declined to testify for the plaintiffs. 

Even though she was a rookie lawyer, Lynn agreed to be an early witness in the case. And she had the complete support of her mentor.

“I heard she would be testifying, so I went by her office and asked if she would like me to go with her to court,” Coleman told The Lawbook in an interview before his death in 2020.

Lynn quickly said yes.

“Jim walked into court with me that day and walked me around the courtroom introducing me to every lawyer there, basically forcing them to shake hands with me,” Lynn said. “Jim sat on the front row, and when I was done he stood up, put his arm around me and walked out with me.”

Coleman said he was sympathetic to the cause.

“I took Barb that morning to meet the judge, and I introduced her to the opposing counsel and right in front of him I said, ‘Bob will treat you with great respect and dignity or I will tell his wife,’” Coleman said.

Judge Lynn says Coleman’s support never wavered and he always made decisions based on doing the right thing.

“We had a client who said he didn’t want women working on his case,” she said. “Jim looked at the client and said, ‘Then we don’t want your business.’”

Another time, Lynn, a young associate, was handling a matter for a major firm client when she discovered that the client was withholding documents despite a court order to produce them.

“I told the client that I would not represent him if he continued to hide the documents,” Judge Lynn said. “The client demanded to speak with Jim, but Jim completely supported me and my position. He was willing to lose the client rather than compromise his integrity. That is Jim Coleman. I am the lawyer and judge that I am today because of him.”

As a young lawyer, Judge Lynn’s career blossomed. She defended large corporations against lawsuits related to employment and labor matters. Every once in a while, she represented plaintiffs. In 1983, Carrington Coleman named Lynn as its first woman partner. 

Act III: The Honorable Barbara Lynn

In the fall of 1999, President Bill Clinton nominated Barbara Lynn to the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of Texas, where she assumed the courtroom of legendary federal Judge Harold Barefoot Sanders. The U.S. Senate unanimously confirmed her on a voice vote.

As a former trial lawyer, she immediately established herself as a judge who loved being in trials and who let the lawyers try cases.

The Dallas Bar Association, in its survey of members, consistently rated Judge Lynn as one of the fairest and most knowledgeable judges in North Texas.

Meacham said it was “daunting” to try a case before Judge Lynn at first. 

“There was just something intimidating about practicing in front of her — I certainly felt that,” he said. “That makes you prepare more and results in better advocacy. I think other lawyers felt it as well because some of the best work I’ve seen by attorneys occurred in her courtroom.”

“Judge Lynn makes the litigants better,” Meacham.  She looks for and provides opportunities for newer lawyers without substantial courtroom experience to get up on their feet and work in her courtroom. I think the legal profession is better because of her, and I believe that will certainly be a part of her legacy.”

Judge Rutherford agreed that Judge Lynn will be remembered for her commitment to mentoring the next generation. 

“In 25 years on the bench, she’s hired more than 50 new law school graduates as law clerks. She honed their skills, and they have gone on to prestigious careers in private practice, the public sector and academia,” Rutherford said. “I think all of them would tell you their year under Judge Lynn’s tutelage was one of the toughest they endured as a lawyer. But if we were lumps of coal, the pressure of her chambers turned us into legal diamonds.”

Judge Lynn handled more than 14,000 civil and criminal cases and conducted more than 170 jury trials during her 25 years on the bench, including some of the most controversial and high-profile cases: 

• the 2024 civil rights trial against former Dallas police officer Amber Guyger in the wrongful shooting death of Botham Jean, which resulted in a jury awarding the victim’s family $98 million in damages;
• the 2009 criminal trial of then-Dallas Mayor Pro Tem Don Hill, whom she sentenced to 18 years for bribery;
• the cases of convicted terrorist Hosam Maher Husein Smadi, whom she sent to prison for 28 years for the attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction in an effort to blow up the 60-story Fountain Place skyscraper; and
• the case of Novus and Optimum Health Services CEO Bradley J. Harris, whom she sentenced to more than 13 years in prison for operating a $60 million Medicare and Medicaid fraud in 2022. 

“Judge Lynn has never been afraid to challenge convention in pursuit of a better result,” Judge Rutherford said. “As a judge, she never shied away from complex or politically sensitive cases. In fact, she became something of a magnet for high-profile matters.”

“And in each of her high-profile cases, she made deliberate efforts to accommodate the media while maintaining courtroom decorum and fairness,” she said. “Judge Lynn ensured that journalists had access to filings, hearings and trial proceedings. She balanced the public’s right to know with the rights of the parties and worked closely with court staff to manage overflow rooms, press seating and real-time updates.”

There was nothing more important in the courtroom to Judge Lynn, according to lawyers, than the women and men who sat in the jury box.

“I love the jury system, and I loved presiding over jury trials,” she said. “I had a mission to make sure juries felt respected.”

While Judge Lynn loved good lawyering, her biggest complaint against lawyers focused on misspellings and grammatical errors, which she said filled two-thirds of the motions and briefs that came to her.

“I’ve seen lawyers get their own client’s name wrong, and some have even misspelled my name,” she said in a 2015 interview. “If I’m the judge in your case, know that you need to proofread your briefs and know that not only do these mistakes upset me, they cause me to not trust you on other things.

“Lawyers tell me that these mistakes should not perturb me, but that doesn’t change the fact that they do,” she said.

In May 2016, she became the first woman to be the chief judge of the Northern District of Texas. And during the Covid-19 pandemic, she was one of the first judges in the U.S. to reopen her courtroom, as she implemented critical safety measures designed to keep trial participants safe but allowed cases to proceed.

“As a great trial lawyer, she had the high energy that it takes to try case after case after case, without hesitation,” Furgeson said. “She was fearless and never intimidated. And she was a skilled and superior courtroom advocate. It is sometimes difficult for great trial lawyers to become great trial judges. They can’t make the transition from advocate to judge. But that was not the case with Judge Lynn.”

“She took her awesome understanding of the courtroom and of evidence and procedure and, from day one, made a remarkable trial judge,” he said. “Good trial lawyers loved her because she was fair to the core, always in control, but let them try their case. In the robe, she was the best of the best.”

Act IV: The Encore

On Sept. 2, Judge Lynn became lawyer Barbara Lynn again — only this time with nearly five decades of courtroom experience and with the deep respect of advocates on both sides of the aisle. 

In her new role, Judge Lynn will focus her practice on mediation, trial consultancy on complex business cases and internal corporate investigations.

“I’m not slamming the door shut [on going to court and trying a case], but I feel like it would be awkward to appear before one of my former colleagues,” she said.

Judge Lynn said she is open to doing one more jury trial — possibly a pro bono case — with her husband, Mike Lynn. 

The unparalleled experience Judge Lynn brings to cases comes with a price tag: She will be charging clients $2,500 an hour — up from $300 an hour when she left the practice in 1999.

Furgeson said he thinks she will make a great mediator. 

“She has a brilliant legal mind and will help litigants understand how to analyze their case,” he said. “She also knows how to be collaborative.  Just look at all the volunteer work that she has done over the years in so many different areas, bringing people together to accomplish mutual goals.”

Trial experts said Judge Lynn’s services as a litigation advisor will be in high demand, especially in higher profile and more complex litigation matters.

“She understands the arc of litigation better than anyone I’ve worked with, and she has an extraordinary ability to keep cases moving forward without ever compromising depth or deliberation,” Rutherford said. “Her work ethic is unmatched, and her love for the law shines through in everything she does. She is, without fail, the most prepared person in the courtroom — whether as an advocate or on the bench. As a judge, she read every brief, studied every appendix and arrived at court ready to listen, engage with counsel and rule with clarity and precision.”

Mike Lynn said he looks forward to his spouse of more than five decades being two doors down from his office.

“I’ve told Barb that now that she’s no longer a judge, people are not going to tell her that she is so funny or so skinny — though I will still have to tell her those things, of course,” he said. “But this is going to be fun. She is a great lawyer and has such a great mind and has more energy than any person I know. No matter what Barb decides to do, she will be successful.”