The Frisco Lawyer Who Argues Family Cases Like Appeals

Most family law cases never reach an appeals court. Most of them never reach a trial. That is what makes the practice Michelle May O’Neil has built in Frisco an odd one, and it is the reason her latest professional recognition is worth more than a line in a directory.

O’Neil, who founded Concierra Legal and works from an office at The Star, has been listed in the 2027 edition of Best Lawyers in America in both appellate practice and family law. It is the eleventh consecutive year she has appeared in both, according to her firm, which says she has been listed every year since 2016.

What the listing is, and is not

Best Lawyers is a peer-review directory. Attorneys cannot nominate themselves and cannot pay to appear, and the firm says the process runs on confidential review by other lawyers and by clients across 203 regional jurisdictions and 151 practice areas.

It recognises fewer than 5 percent of practising attorneys in the United States. Appearing in two separate practice areas at once means clearing that bar twice.

“The lawyers who reviewed me are the ones who have seen me in court, read my briefs, and listened to my arguments,” O’Neil said in the announcement issued by her firm. “That is what gives this recognition its weight. It does not come from marketing. It comes from the people who observe the work.”

The unusual combination

Appellate lawyers generally do appellate work and little else. Family lawyers, including very good ones, often never build an appellate practice, because the cases settle long before anyone writes a brief.

O’Neil works at the seam between the two, and describes her approach as appellate-first: she considers from the opening of a case how a decision would survive review, rather than waiting until there is something to appeal.

Her firm says she has handled more than 195 appellate matters, handled 55 matters before the Supreme Court of Texas, three of them oral arguments and filed one application for review with the U.S. Supreme Court, alongside more than 37 jury trials across 34 years. Those counts come from the firm and have not been independently verified.

She has been licensed in Texas since 1992 and board certified in family law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization since 1997.

The firm lists her as counsel of record in In re Ayad, Moore v. Moore and Kausland v. Volek, decisions it says shape how Texas courts treat premarital agreements.

Why the work has changed

Speaking to Local Profile, O’Neil said the cases reaching her now turn more often on assets that are difficult to value: privately held companies, patents and trademarks, stock and option packages, and holdings that exist only online. North Texas has become a centre of business formation, and that shows up in what gets divided.

For someone who has built a company, she told the outlet, that business is at once how they earn a living, how they understand themselves, and the single biggest item on the marital balance sheet.

She also said legal information produced by AI could widen access to the courts while generating material that reads convincingly and is wrong as a matter of law. Speaking to Local Profile, she put the consequence this way: “the scarce resource in law is shifting from access to information toward the judgment required to evaluate that information.”

Her firm says she founded an Institute for Constitutional AI Law and created a framework called the Identity Stack, which it says was presented at SXSW this year and is taught at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Those descriptions come from the firm.

She holds a law degree and a business degree from Baylor University.

Sources

https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2026/08/20/3348713/0/en/michelle-may-o-neil-earns-best-lawyers-in-america-2027-recognition-for-excellence-in-both-appellate-practice-and-family-law-for-the-eleventh-straight-year.html

https://www.localprofile.com/local-leaders/how-frisco-attorney-michelle-oneil-earned-11-straight-best-lawyers-recognitions-12707641

Correction, Sept. 6, 2026: An earlier version of this article said O'Neil had appeared in 55 cases before the Supreme Court of Texas. The firm's figure is 55 matters before that Court, most of them briefing rather than oral argument. O'Neil has presented three oral arguments there.