The Story of Wenholz Law: Fighting for Austin Property Owners

When I became a lawyer, I was the first one in my family to do it. I didn't come into this profession with connections or a family firm waiting for me, and I suspect that's why I've always sided with the person holding less leverage. A homeowner going toe to toe with a builder's legal team. A family whose insurance company keeps finding reasons not to pay. Those are the people I want to stand next to, because they're usually the ones who are right.

That's the quick answer to why Wenholz Law exists. The full story starts a long way from Austin.

The Beginning

What a Petrochemical Case Taught Me About Construction

My first years of practice were at a large firm in Dallas. Early on, I was put on a case over a petrochemical plant that involved one of the ten biggest construction companies in the world. Somebody had to track down the facts, and that somebody was me. I went wherever the witnesses were, which at one point meant climbing aboard shrimp boats to talk with people who had seen the project up close.

The longer I worked that case, the more it hooked me. Construction has a right way and a wrong way, and I found I had an eye for telling the difference. I also saw how lopsided the field was. The builders had lawyers lined up around the block. Homeowners mostly had no one. I wanted to be the person they could call.

Building on Uneven Ground

What's Happening Under Austin's New Neighborhoods

Drive around Austin and you'll see cleared lots and new subdivisions in every direction. The demand for housing has pulled in national homebuilders and small local outfits alike, and plenty of them are racing to finish homes and sell them. When the pressure is on to build fast, mistakes happen. But the dirt adds its own complications.

Roughly speaking, I-35 marks a dividing line. The ground to the west tends to hold steady. The ground to the east tends to move. A large share of the homeowners who come to me live on that eastern side, in houses whose foundations weren't engineered for what's underneath them.

I've seen what this does to families. Contractors coming and going for months. Furniture shoved into corners. A bedroom nobody can sleep in. Every new crack in the drywall raises the same question: how bad is this going to get? One thing I can do is tell you plainly how long the process is likely to take and what each phase will look like, so you're not living in limbo.

Specialized Work

Defective Construction and Insurers Who Won't Pay

This is a narrow corner of the law, and finding an attorney who really understands it is harder than most people expect. I learned that during the hurricane years, when I was handling bad faith insurance claims. As soon as a few of those cases paid off, it seemed like every lawyer in Texas was suddenly advertising bad faith work. When a gold rush like that kicks off, you find out quickly who actually knows the territory.

These days, a lot of my attention is on Austin backyards. Hundreds of residential pools are breaking down from a condition people call "concrete cancer." There's no patch for it. The pool has to be excavated and built again from scratch. Along with two other attorneys, I represent homeowners in more than 100 of these pool defect cases.

Litigation on that scale takes a team. You need people who can move a big docket forward without letting any single family get lost in the shuffle. I've worked on teams like that for years, and I count myself among the Texas lawyers trying to even the odds for homeowners. Houses are my first love, but my clients also include churches, apartment owners, and other commercial properties.

My Approach

Seeing the Damage Firsthand

I don't like sizing up a case from behind a desk. I want to stand in the house, look at the cracks, and hear what the engineers think while we're all standing there together. After this many years, I can usually tell where a case is headed and what obstacles we'll run into. You won't get a sales pitch from me. You'll get my honest read.

My daughter, a doctor, put this in perspective for me. She had just come out of an eight-hour operation, and what was on her mind was her rounds the next morning. Good doctors don't make patients chase them for updates. They bring the news themselves. I run my practice the same way, because clients shouldn't have to wonder what's going on with their case. This is service work, and it goes in both directions. You'll find me easy to reach, willing to listen, and quick to laugh. Above all, I want to make things better for you.

In the Courtroom

When a Case Needs a Trial Lawyer

A lot of attorneys will do almost anything to stay out of a courtroom. I enjoy being there. I've handled arbitrations and negotiated settlements, but if your case needs to be tried, I'm comfortable in front of a jury, and I'm good at it. I belong to TEX-ABOTA and the Texas Trial Lawyers Association, and colleagues have told me I'm the lawyer they call.

Waiting on a jury never gets easier. My pulse still races every time. Win or lose, what matters most to me in that moment is that my client walks out feeling like they were finally heard.

Not every case begins and ends with one family. We took Ford to task over how it mounted the battery in some F-150s. In certain crashes, when the hood lifts, the battery could lift with it and injure someone, even though Ford used a safer setup in other versions of the same truck. That outcome meant a great deal to me.

I also take pride in the younger lawyers I've helped along, and one of them happens to be my other daughter, who followed me into the law. The people I've worked beside are a big part of why I still love this job. So is the feeling of winning a hard-fought case.

First Steps

Build a Paper Trail Before You Need It

If something is wrong with your home, start keeping records today. The strongest cases show a homeowner who reached out, asked for repairs, and kept getting brushed off.

Once you have that record, talk to someone who handles these cases every day. The earlier I'm involved, the more room we have to work.