Proud Mother, Loving Wife, Dedicated Teacher, Patient Mediator, Top Attorney, Texas Tough.

Barbara Ann Radnofsky was named among the “Best Lawyers in America” for the last 17 years. She’s a tough and experienced Texas lawyer who has been winning trials and mediating conflicts for 30 years.

An attorney since 1979, Barbara Ann is a proud mother of three, a loving wife, a dedicated teacher, a patient mediator and a tough attorney. Barbara Ann is a distinguished lawyer and served at one of the top law firms in the state, Vinson & Elkins. At the firm, Barbara Ann achieved an important first: she was the first woman to have children as an associate and attain partnership. After her 2006 retirement from Vinson & Elkins, she became the first woman in history to serve as the Texas Democratic U.S. Senate nominee.

During her 30 year legal career, Barbara Ann has represented retirees, life-saving doctors, blood banks, children burned by lighters, families of murder victims, unfairly treated businesses: a wide variety of persons entitled to protection.

‘Bright, Accomplished & Driven’

Described as “bright, accomplished and driven” by The Dallas Morning News, Barbara Ann has served as lead counsel in jury trials involving commercial disputes, medical malpractice, tax, contractual indemnity, false arrest, malicious prosecution, assault, premises liability, insurance defense matters, pedestrian and auto accidents, civil rights disputes, worker's compensation matters, and products liability. She has argued successfully before the Fifth Circuit on pro bono prisoner's rights and torts matters; conducted appeals there, and in Texas state appellate courts and represented clients in Congressional hearings and administrative tribunals.

In 1999, Barbara Ann successfully petitioned the Consumer Product Safety Commission to prohibit defective barbecue lighters with estimated annual savings of millions of dollars and hundreds of lives.

A trained mediator (AMI Mediator Training, Summer 1991, Dallas, TX; Advanced Mediation Training AMI, November 20, 1993) and arbitrator (AAA Commercial Arbitration Training, Orlando, Florida, October 10, 1998), Barbara Ann has conducted hundreds of dispute resolutions involving anti-trust, bad faith insurance, commercial, banking, bankruptcy, toxic waste disposal, pipeline explosion, and various personal injury matters.

She was appointed by the Tribunal Arbitral du Sport, Lausanne, Switzerland as Mediator of the Court of Arbitration (April, 2002).

She served as Chairman (2003 - 2004) and Vice Chair of Programming (2002-2003) for the Alternate Dispute Resolution Committee of the International Association of Defense Counsel.

Barbara Ann advocates the use of mediation and other interest-based methods of dispute resolution, with the goal of reducing partisanship, polarization, and unnecessarily adversarial practices.

Connected to the Community

Barbara Ann was honored as the Outstanding Young Lawyer of Texas in 1988. Since 1994, Barbara Ann has been a volunteer peer mediation teacher in both public and private schools. She currently serves on the board of the Houston chapter of the National Association for Urban Debate Leagues and as a graduate of the FBI Citizen’s Academy she also serves on the Board of the FBI Citizen’s Academy Alumni Association (Houston). She attended the Nobel ceremonies as founder of the World Foundation for Medical Research and Prevention, watching Foundation President Professor Luc Montagnier accept the 2008 Nobel Prize for Medicine.

She and her husband, Ed Supkis, MD, are active in supporting the Dead Sea Scrolls Foundation, enabling museum displays of the scrolls and commissioning publication of a scrolls volume. They are co-owners of the Brazos Bookstore, an independent bookseller and a Houston institution.

Barbara Ann received a JD with Honors from the University of Texas School of Law and a BA, magna cum laude, from the University of Houston. She is bilingual, speaking English and Spanish.