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Gardner Employment Law: A Board-Certified Specialist Who Represents Both Sides

Barbara Gardner’s own description of her practice is unusually direct for an attorney marketing to prospective clients: “I handle any type problem that happens at work, including terminations. I represent both individuals and small/medium-sized companies.” That mixed representation, stated plainly in her own words, sets her apart from the employee-only firms elsewhere in this category and is the first thing prospective clients should know.

At a Glance: Austin Employment Lawyer Firm Overview

I. Thirty Years, Two Cities, One Practice That Bridges Both Sides of the Table

Barbara Gardner earned her J.D. from South Texas College of Law Houston in 1981, graduating first in her class, serving on law review as case notes editor, and clerking for two years for U.S. District Judge Carl Bue in the Southern District of Texas. She built her career in Houston — including time as a founding partner of a firm that succeeded Mandell & Wright, a Houston firm dating to 1935 — before establishing her current Austin-registered practice. Her Super Lawyers profiles list both an Austin and a Houston presence, and her Texas Bar registration lists the Austin address as current.

II. Board Certified, With an Unusually Broad Client Base for That Credential

Texas Bar rules prohibit any attorney from advertising as a “specialist” unless board certified in that specialty by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization (TBLS) or an accredited certifying organization. Gardner holds that certification in Labor and Employment Law, confirmed independently through Super Lawyers’ credential listing rather than only her own claim. What’s less typical is how she applies it: Super Lawyers categorizes her practice under both “Employment & Labor: Employee” and “Employment & Labor: Employer,” and her own Avvo profile confirms she represents “both individuals and small/medium-sized companies” — a genuinely dual-sided practice from a board-certified specialist, rather than the employee-only or employer-only concentration most board-certified attorneys in this field maintain.

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

Gardner’s practice concentrates heavily on contract negotiation and counseling rather than adversarial litigation for rank-and-file workers: physician employment contracts, non-compete and buyout negotiations, Texas Medical Board complaint defense, executive employment contracts, NDAs, and severance agreement review. She also handles terminations, discrimination, and general workplace disputes for both individual and corporate clients. This is a meaningfully different practice shape than the plaintiff-litigation-focused firms elsewhere in this category — more transactional and advisory, less centered on filing lawsuits.

IV. Track Record

Prior results do not guarantee or predict a similar outcome. Employment settlements are frequently confidential, which limits what any firm can publish about individual case values.

Awesome Attorneys was not able to independently verify these case outcomes beyond Gardner’s own Avvo-published case history; both are included because they represent her own disclosed litigation record rather than anonymous claims, and one (Chung) is explicitly disclosed as unresolved rather than presented as a win.

V. Client Voice

Reviews on the firm’s own site and Avvo are consistently positive, drawn from both individual and corporate clients — a reflection of the dual-sided practice. One corporate client wrote: “Barbara is an excellent lawyer and has been such a huge asset to our company. Her understanding of employment law has positioned us away from potential undue risks and liabilities.” An individual client, an SVP who was let go from a specialty chemicals manufacturer, wrote that Gardner “gave me very specific and helpful advice which ensured that my rights were protected and the severance amount was fair.” Awesome Attorneys did not identify a negative review on Avvo or the firm’s own site; Avvo’s own review count for Gardner is modest (2 reviews), which should be weighed against the firm’s much larger volume of self-published testimonials.

VI. Beyond the Courtroom

Gardner is a Fellow of the Texas Bar Foundation and the College of the State Bar of Texas, sits on the Executive Council of the Houston Bar Association’s Employment Law Section, and has served on the Houston Employment Law Association’s Board of Directors. She has spoken to high school students through the State Bar’s Speakers Bureau on jury service and voting, and has appeared on Fox News as an employment law commentator. She has also spoken at numerous CLE seminars for the State Bar of Texas, the Houston Bar Association, and the Texas Employment Lawyers Association over multiple decades.

VII. Recognition

Peer-reviewed and independently conferred credentials: Texas Board of Legal Specialization certification in Labor and Employment Law; Best Lawyers in America recognition in Employment Law – Individuals, continuously since 2007 (18 years); Super Lawyers selection from 2007–2025 (19 years), via Thomson Reuters’ peer-review process.

No marketing-program-only awards beyond those already listed were identified for this profile.

VIII. The Texas Legal Backdrop

Texas is an at-will employment state, with discrimination and retaliation claims running through Title VII, the ADA, and the ADEA federally 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. For Gardner’s physician-focused work specifically, non-compete agreements in Texas are governed by the Texas Covenants Not to Compete Act (Texas Business and Commerce Code Chapter 15), which imposes reasonableness limits on time, geography, and scope — particularly relevant to the physician non-compete buyouts that make up part of her practice. Executive severance and release agreements are also frequently subject to the federal Older Workers Benefit Protection Act’s specific disclosure and revocation-period requirements when age discrimination waivers are involved.

IX. Awesome Attorneys Assessment: Weighing This Austin Employment Lawyer

Gardner’s clearest strength is a rare combination: genuine, independently verified board certification in labor and employment law, an 18-year run of Best Lawyers recognition, and deep transactional expertise specifically in physician and executive contracts — a niche most employee-side litigation boutiques don’t build out. For a physician negotiating a non-compete or an executive reviewing a severance package, that specialized counseling experience is a real differentiator.

The fair caveat, stated by Gardner herself: this is not an employee-only practice. She represents companies as well as individuals, which is a meaningfully different structure than the plaintiff-side firms profiled elsewhere in this category, and prospective clients with an adversarial claim against an employer should weigh that directly. Her publicly documented litigation track record is also thin relative to her decades of practice, with only two case names disclosed and one still unresolved.

X. Methodology & Sourcing

This profile was compiled from the firm’s own website (gardneremploymentlaw.com), including its About, Testimonials, and conference-appearance pages; Barbara Gardner’s Avvo profile, including her self-description and listed case history; Super Lawyers’ peer-review attorney profile, used specifically to independently confirm her TBLS board certification; Best Lawyers’ firm profile; and her LinkedIn profile. Case narratives, client counts, and awards are the firm’s own published claims unless independently sourced and attributed as such. Statutory citations were checked against the Texas Labor Code and Texas Business and Commerce Code. 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 Gardner Employment Law 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 Gardner Employment Law or Awesome Attorneys.