A well-known motoring blog recently ran a list of the highest-rated and most-reviewed truck accident attorneys in San Antonio, filtered to firms holding a flawless five-star Google rating. It was a sharp idea, and it raised an obvious follow-up for those who live north and west of Loop 1604: what happens if you run that same test out there?
So we looked into it and ran it. Eight Hill Country towns (New Braunfels, Boerne, Canyon Lake, Helotes, Fair Oaks Ranch, Bulverde, Spring Branch and Kerrville) were looked and and we stayed true to pickuptrucktalk.com’s research, where only the firms carrying a perfect 5.0 rating with at least 100 Google reviews were used.
What came back was quite interesting!
Most of the highly rated results that show up aren’t Hill Country firms
Here is the finding that reframed this entire piece: of the firms that cleared the bar across those eight searches, only one turned out to be a personal injury practice actually headquartered in the Hill Country.
The rest are based in San Antonio, Austin and, in one case,all the way out in Houston.
That last one deserves explaining, because it’s a perfect illustration of why you shouldn’t take a map result at face value. Searching Spring Branch, the small Comal County city west of Canyon Lake, returned a firm whose office is on Louetta Road in Spring, Texas, a Houston suburb roughly 190 miles east. Spring Branch is also the name of a well-known district inside Houston, and when our editors crawled that firm’s website, the only appearance of the phrase anywhere on it sat in a list of Houston neighborhoods, alongside Klein, Champion Forest and Old Town Spring. There is no Comal County page, no Hill Country page, nothing. A Comal County resident searching for help nearby was shown a firm on the other side of the state because two places share a name.
Three towns returned no qualifying firm at all: Fair Oaks Ranch, Bulverde and Kerrville. That isn’t a verdict on the lawyers there. Review volume tracks population, and Kerrville has a courthouse, a jury pool and capable attorneys who simply haven’t accumulated 100+ Google reviews.
The one that’s genuinely local
The Bettersworth Law Firm, New Braunfels
107 reviews · 110 W Faust St, New Braunfels https://www.bettersworthlaw.com/
This is the only firm on our list that is both headquartered in the Hill Country and practicing personal injury, and it’s a boutique in the true sense: James S. Bettersworth is the firm’s injury litigator, supported by two associate attorneys who handle the family law side.
His local roots are unusually well documented. He served on the New Braunfels ISD Board of Trustees from 2010 to 2019, and he currently sits as an Associate Judge for the City of New Braunfels. He earned his J.D. at St. Mary’s in San Antonio and his undergraduate degree at Texas Lutheran in nearby Seguin, and he’s practiced from this one Faust Street office since 1998. Beyond the Texas state courts, he’s admitted in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, and he’s a Fellow of the Texas Bar Foundation and a member of the Texas Trial Lawyers Association.
He is also a member of the Academy of Truck Accident Attorneys, and the firm maintains a genuinely deep 18-wheeler practice covering jackknife collisions, driver fatigue, unsecured loads and I-35 wrecks, with more than a dozen dedicated pages on trucking scenarios alone. On US 281 and SH 46, where quarry and aggregate trucks share two lanes with everyone else, that’s not a niche credential.
The published results bear it out. Commercial vehicle cases dominate the firm’s recent verdicts and settlements. There are nine of them, led by $6.2 million for an 18-wheeler wreck and a separate $2 million 18-wheeler result, followed by a run of commercial vehicle recoveries between $500,000 and $1.5 million for injuries including a fractured eye socket, a broken femur, an aortic injury, and a broken tibia and fibula. A $3.5 million result came from a head injury in a medical negligence case. For a practice of this size, that is an unusually concentrated commercial vehicle record, and it’s the single best reason for a Comal County truck-wreck claimant to start here.
One note for accuracy’s sake: at least one legal directory lists this firm as operating three offices. The firm’s own site, the State Bar of Texas and the BBB all show one. It’s one.
San Antonio boutiques that serve these towns
Most Hill Country residents will end up hiring in San Antonio, simply because that’s where the density of injury practices is. The firms below are boutiques, built around a named principal rather than a marketing department, and all of them treat Comal, Kendall and Kerr counties as a genuine service radius rather than a billboard.
JRE Injury Law
346 reviews · 931 Basse Rd, San Antonio https://jreinjurylaw.com/
The strongest boutique option for a Hill Country claimant, and the one whose stated priority (commercial vehicle and 18-wheeler claims) matches what actually goes wrong on 281, 46 and I-10.
Founder Joseph R. Echavarria is a San Antonio native, UTSA and SMU Dedman School of Law, licensed since 2007.
The firm also operates with Ethan L. Shaw of Shaw Cowart LLP in Austin as Of Counsel to JRE Injury Law. Shaw has been Board Certified in both Personal Injury Trial Law and Civil Trial Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization since 1995, a dual distinction held by a very small share of Texas lawyers.
Attorney Ethan L. Shaw’s own record runs heavily to vehicle cases: he served as lead counsel in a wrongful-death action against Ryder Truck Rental arising from a four-fatality collision, and his firm’s results include a $2 million-plus jury verdict on an underinsured motorist claim, a policy-limits settlement for a family injured in a multi-vehicle collision, a judgment against a trucking company in Babineaux v. Trammel Time Trucking, and confidential settlements in commercial trucking cases in Waco and Savannah. A second Of Counsel attorney at JRE Injury Law, Jorge Mares, settled a $2.25 million claim for a father and son T-boned by a driver who ran a stop sign, a case the defense contested on liability until a single deposition settled the question.
What the reviews describe is access. Clients report Mr. Echavarria returning calls personally, including in the evening, and they name their case manager or paralegal by first name. Eleven different staff members appear by name across the review set, which is rare. Reviewers also credit the firm with arranging their chiropractic care, physical therapy and doctor appointments while they recovered. Contingency fees, free consultation, English and Spanish.
The office is in San Antonio, serving Boerne, New Braunfels, Kerrville and the surrounding Hill Country counties.
Reynaldo Diaz Accident Injury Attorney PC
277 reviews · 308 W Josephine St, San Antonio
Licensed in Texas since 1987 and running his own practice since 1995. That’s roughly three decades of South Texas injury work, a longer runway than almost anyone else here. The practice is built around him, with bilingual service and a reputation for responsiveness.
Law Office of Israel Garcia
203 reviews · 926 Chulie Dr, San Antonio
Baylor Law, licensed 2003, with time at a large San Antonio business firm before opening his own practice. The State Bar lists this as a single-attorney firm, which is worth knowing given the plural “our team” language most law firm websites use. The lawyer you hire is the lawyer who works your file.
Cantu Law Firm, PLLC
168 reviews · 5500 UTSA Blvd, San Antonio
Surfaced in our Helotes search, and it’s close to Helotes (about eight miles away), but this is a San Antonio firm with one office and no Hill Country presence. Principal attorney German Cantú took an unusual route to law: he founded and ran a masonry construction company before closing it to attend St. Mary’s, graduating in 2015. He’s supported by one associate. The firm maintains a dedicated 18-wheeler practice page and a complete Spanish-language mirror of its site.
The mid-sized San Antonio firms
A tier up in headcount, still small enough that you’ll know your attorney. Crosley Law (374 reviews) is led by Tom Crosley, Board Certified in Personal Injury Trial Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization, with a handful of associates and a real trial posture. Ried Pecina Trial Lawyers (290) is a two-partner firm: Arthur Ried, a former Bexar County prosecutor, and Juan Pecina. Ali Law Group (193) and Joe Ecke Injury Lawyers (171) are each two-attorney practices, and Volk & McElroy (145) is three lawyers who market themselves, accurately, as three lawyers who don’t hand off cases.
Firms where you should ask which office handles your case
These cleared the rating filter, and two carry the highest review counts of any firm we found. They’re last because of footprint. When our editors checked each one’s published office list against State Bar records, none showed a physical office in any of the eight towns we searched.
- Herrman & Herrman P.L.L.C. (561 reviews): a heavily advertised South Texas firm with roughly eleven to fifteen attorneys across nine or more Texas offices plus Monterrey, Mexico. Headquarters is Corpus Christi; the San Antonio location is a branch.
- Williams Caputo Injury Lawyers (336 reviews): six attorneys headquartered at Wild Basin Road in West Lake Hills, just outside Austin, with additional addresses in Denver and Phoenix. Founding attorney Burgess Williams is an Academy of Truck Accident Attorneys member, a real trucking credential. The firm has no office (and no landing page) for any Hill Country town; its Canyon Lake appearance is proximity-driven.
- Daws & Associates PLLC (179 reviews): the Spring Branch name-collision firm described above. A one-attorney practice founded in January 2023 by Joshua A. Daws, a Texas Tech Law graduate licensed in 2017, whose entire footprint is northwest Harris County.
A word on what this list is and isn’t
A perfect Google rating tells you a firm treats people decently. It is not a measure of trial skill, trucking experience or the size of the recoveries a firm obtains, and it shouldn’t be the only reason you hire anyone.
There are certainly good Hill Country attorneys who aren’t here: firms with no Google Business Profile, firms sitting just under 100 reviews, newer practices, and firms our search simply didn’t surface. Kerrville and Bulverde in particular almost certainly have capable injury lawyers that this filter was too blunt to find. Treat this as a place to start your own phone calls, not a finish line.
This guide is informational and is not legal advice. Attorney credentials, firm sizes and office locations are drawn from the firms’ own published materials, Google Business Profiles, and public legal directories including the State Bar of Texas; prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Verify any attorney’s current license status and disciplinary history through the State Bar of Texas before retaining counsel.
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