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Deats, Durst & Owen, PLLC: The Firm That Also Represents Labor Unions

Most employment-side firms in Austin represent individual employees against individual employers, full stop. Deats, Durst & Owen, PLLC does that too, but its practice also includes something rarer among this site’s Austin candidates: direct representation of labor unions themselves, in collective bargaining, grievance arbitration, and unfair labor practice complaints before the National Labor Relations Board. It is the literal “labor” half of an “employment and labor” category that many firms in this space only nominally cover.

At a Glance: Austin Employment Lawyer Firm Overview

I. A 2005 Merger, Now a Three-Attorney Union- and Employee-Side Practice

The firm formed in 2005 from the merger of two long-established Texas labor and employment firms. Founding partner Martha P. Owen has practiced since 1982 and served as General Counsel of the Texas Federation of Teachers, AFT, AFL-CIO from 1991 through 2023 — a 32-year institutional relationship with one of the state’s larger public-sector unions. As of 2024, her role at the firm has narrowed to Special Counsel to Texas AFT specifically, a detail worth stating plainly since it means her current caseload is more limited than her decades of practice history might suggest. The active trial team today is Manuel Quinto-Pozos and Matt Bachop, both partners who joined the firm in the 2010s.

II. No Board-Certified Specialist, But Deep Institutional Union Ties

Awesome Attorneys did not find a current Texas Board of Legal Specialization certification for any of the firm’s active attorneys, and does not use the term “specialist” for this firm as a result. What the firm does have is a different kind of depth: Martha Owen has been included in Best Lawyers in America for labor and employment law every year since 1997, a peer-review credential with a genuinely long track record, and was a Texas Super Lawyer from 2019–2023. Manuel Quinto-Pozos graduated summa cum laude from the University of Illinois College of Law and previously worked as a staff attorney for the ACLU Foundation of Texas on religious liberty, free speech, and LGBT rights matters. Matt Bachop graduated with high honors and Order of the Coif from the University of Texas School of Law and served on the Texas Law Review’s editorial board.

III. Practice Concentration: What This Austin Employment Attorney Firm Handles

The firm organizes its work into five areas: labor (representing unions in organizing, collective bargaining, arbitration, and NLRB proceedings), individual employment (discrimination, retaliation, whistleblower, wage and hour, and wrongful termination claims), executive employment counsel (contract negotiation, non-compete disputes, severance agreements), civil rights and public interest litigation (due process, free speech, and open-records/open-meetings enforcement), and legislative advocacy at the Texas Capitol. That combination of union-side labor law and individual employment litigation under one roof is uncommon; most Austin employment boutiques do one or the other, not both.

IV. Track Record

Prior results do not guarantee or predict a similar outcome. The figures below are drawn from the firm’s own published account of specific matters; the appellate case is independently confirmed to exist and match the cited outcome through outside legal-research sources, though Awesome Attorneys did not independently verify the firm’s role as counsel of record.

The firm’s site lists numerous additional settled matters (NLRB unfair labor practice complaints, FLSA misclassification settlements across several industries, discrimination settlements with tech and startup employers) without specific dollar figures, consistent with typical settlement confidentiality; those are not itemized here for the same reason.

V. Client Voice

Awesome Attorneys did not identify a substantial body of individually attributed client reviews for this firm on Avvo, Yelp, or Google at the time of writing — a genuine gap worth disclosing rather than papering over with the firm’s self-description alone. This is not unusual for a firm whose practice mix includes significant union and institutional-client work (where the “client” giving feedback is often an organization rather than an individual reviewer), but it does mean this profile relies more heavily on the firm’s documented case results and attorney credentials than on independently verified client sentiment.

VI. Beyond the Courtroom

The firm’s legislative advocacy work — drafting legislation, lobbying at the Capitol, and crafting municipal ordinances on behalf of unions and other organizations — is a form of public-facing work distinct from litigation. Manuel Quinto-Pozos serves on the boards of the ACLU of Texas, the ACLU Foundation of Texas, and NAMI Central Texas, and is a member of the AFL-CIO Union Lawyers’ Alliance board. Martha Owen’s three-decade role as General Counsel to a statewide teachers’ union reflects an unusually long-running institutional relationship rather than case-by-case client acquisition.

VII. Recognition

Peer-reviewed and independently conferred credentials: Martha Owen’s Best Lawyers in America inclusion for labor and employment law, continuously since 1997, and her Texas Super Lawyer selections from 2019–2023, both via established peer-review processes.

No board certification or marketing-program awards were identified for the firm’s other attorneys at the time of writing; Awesome Attorneys is noting that absence directly rather than substituting other credentials to fill the gap.

VIII. The Texas Legal Backdrop

Texas is an at-will employment state, with discrimination claims running through Title VII, the ADA, and the ADEA at the federal level and the Texas Commission on Human Rights Act (Texas Labor Code Chapter 21) at the state level, requiring a Texas Workforce Commission charge within 180 days. On the labor side specifically, the National Labor Relations Act governs private-sector union organizing, collective bargaining, and unfair labor practice claims, enforced through the National Labor Relations Board rather than state courts — a separate procedural track from ordinary employment litigation. Public employees raising whistleblower claims proceed under the Texas Whistleblower Act, Texas Government Code Chapter 554, the statute at issue in the firm’s McMillen case. Wage claims run through the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (two-year limitations period, three years for willful violations) and the Texas Payday Act, Texas Labor Code Chapter 61.

IX. Awesome Attorneys Assessment: Weighing This Austin Employment Lawyer

This firm’s genuine differentiator is scope: representing labor unions directly, not just individual employees, is a distinct legal practice with its own procedural track (NLRB proceedings, collective bargaining law) that most Austin employment boutiques don’t build institutional expertise in. The McMillen Texas Supreme Court case is a real, independently verifiable precedent in Texas whistleblower law, and the FLSA and discrimination jury results carry specific, checkable dollar figures rather than vague claims.

The fair caveats: Martha Owen’s practice has narrowed considerably since 2024, meaning prospective clients are likely to work primarily with Quinto-Pozos or Bachop rather than the firm’s most decorated attorney; and the near-total absence of publicly posted client reviews makes it harder to independently gauge day-to-day client experience compared to firms with a larger public review footprint.

X. Methodology & Sourcing

This profile was compiled from the firm’s own website (ddollaw.com), including its About and individual attorney biography pages; independent case-law research confirming McMillen v. Texas Health & Human Services Commission, 485 S.W.3d 427 (Tex. 2016) via FindLaw, Justia, and outside law-firm legal commentary; and a search for client reviews on Avvo, Yelp, and Google that did not surface a substantial independent review record. Case results, client counts, and case narratives are the firm’s own published claims unless independently sourced and attributed as such. Statutory citations were checked against the Texas Labor Code, Texas Government Code, and the National Labor Relations Act. No case results, credentials, or quotes were invented.

Publisher Disclosure & Independence Notice

Awesome Attorneys is an independent legal directory and editorial publication. This profile was not paid for, commissioned, or reviewed by Deats, Durst & Owen, PLLC prior to publication. Awesome Attorneys may in the future offer sponsored placements clearly labeled as such, but no payment of any kind determines inclusion in, or the content of, this editorial profile. This article is for informational purposes only, does not constitute legal advice, and does not create an attorney-client relationship between the reader and Deats, Durst & Owen, PLLC or Awesome Attorneys.