The nine lawyers who decide who gets a Texas law license meet Sept. 18 at an Austin hotel to hear where the state’s efficiency auditors have landed on their agency, and to be briefed again on the exam that will replace the one they give now.
The audit is new territory. A 2025 law requires the state auditor to examine each agency four years before its scheduled sunset review and report to the Legislature by Nov. 1 of the audit year — and requires the agency being audited to pay for it. The Board of Law Examiners is an unusual subject. It takes no legislative appropriation at all; its money comes from applicant fees, sits outside the state treasury, and its budget is approved by the Texas Supreme Court, which also appoints its members. That budget is $5.4 million this year, about 19 percent above two years ago, after fee increases that took effect with the July exam.
The second thread is the exam. Texas moves to the national bar examiners’ redesigned test in July 2028, and the Supreme Court ruled in March that a separate, graded Texas component will run alongside it, covering trusts and guardianship, wills and administration, civil procedure, criminal law and procedure, family law, and real property including oil and gas. That restores something Texas gave up in 2021, when it dropped its own essay and procedure sections and joined the multistate exam. Texas is the second-largest state using that exam; roughly 4,000 people sit for it here each year.
Results from the July exam are not part of the Sept. 18 briefing. The board has not posted them, and on recent practice they arrive in October. The most recent numbers the national examiners publish are from February, when 46 percent of the 1,000 people who sat passed, and from July 2025, when 75 percent did.
The board also takes up an order honoring C. Alfred Mackenzie, a Waco appellate lawyer and Baylor adjunct who served on it from 2015 until his death in January at 60. The Supreme Court named Kristal C. Thomson of San Antonio to his unexpired term in May. A board photograph is on the agenda.
Meeting at a glance
- When
- 8:30 a.m. CT Friday, September 18, 2026. The notice, TRD 2026005429, was filed September 10 at 7:37 a.m.
- Where
- Hilton Garden Inn, 301 West 17th Street, Austin.
- Governing body & chair
- Texas Board of Law Examiners — nine attorneys the Texas Supreme Court appoints to staggered six-year terms, not the governor. Augustin Rivera Jr. is chair; no seat is vacant.
- Format
- Regular meeting, 15 items. One item on litigation and one on testing accommodations may go into closed session. No public comment item is listed, but the agenda invites communication from the public.
- Live video
- None listed. The board does not post agendas, minutes or video on its website; notices appear only in the state’s open meetings database.
- Full agenda
- Secretary of State Open Meeting Viewer
Board members
- Augustin Rivera Jr. — chair; Corpus Christi; general counsel, Del Mar College District.
- Teresa Ereon Giltner — vice chair; Dallas; real estate and finance lawyer, Dykema.
- Harold Odom — Houston; founding partner, Schiffer Odom Hicks & Johnson.
- Anna M. McKim — Lubbock; shareholder, Field Manning; board-certified in family law.
- Cynthia Eva Hujar Orr — San Antonio; partner, Goldstein Goldstein & Hilley; criminal defense.
- Carlos R. Soltero — Austin; shareholder, Maynard Nexsen; commercial and employment litigation.
- W. Stephen Benesh — Austin; Bracewell litigator; 2024–25 State Bar of Texas president.
- Alexis Howard Lewis — Houston; former chief legal officer of a financial institution.
- Kristal C. Thomson — San Antonio; partner, Goranson Bain Ausley; board-certified in family law.
Roster from the board’s about page, cross-checked against the Texas Supreme Court’s appointment orders. All nine seats are filled. Terms expire May 31 of odd-numbered years; Benesh, Lewis and Soltero run to 2031 and Thomson to 2029. The board’s page carries no leadership date more recent than 2019, so the chair and vice chair should be confirmed with staff. No reappointment order was found for Odom, who was first appointed in 2009, and no current expiration is printed for him here. Nahdiah Hoang is executive director; Ciara Parks is general counsel. The last published staffing figure, 18 employees, dates to 2015.