Welcome to Fahle Law Firm

What We Do

Fahle Law Firm is not a general practice firm. Rather than take the "scattergun" or "jack-of-all-trades" approach used by some firms, we stick to what we do best: the representation of the citizen accused of committing a crime. This site is dedicated to answering your questions about the most common accusation, Driving While Intoxicated (DWI).

John Fahle is Board Certified in Criminal Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization. For more information about what Board Certification requires, and what it means to you as a potential client, please check the Articles section of our site. Mr. Fahle has represented hundreds of citizens accused around the country in fourteen years of legal practice, from those charged with capital murder to bank fraud to DWI. As a result, Mr. Fahle is intimately familiar not only with the state and federal legal systems, but also with the questions and concerns of clients and potential clients.

When a person is accused of DWI, he or she is justifiably afraid. With Texas DWI laws growing tougher with each legislative session, (for more information, please see our page on Texas DWI penalties) it is natural for you to be concerned if you have been charged with violating those laws. At Fahle Law Firm, we make it our business to alleviate your fears and address your concerns from the first minute of contact. You can often speak to an attorney when you first call the office, and we can usually set up your free in-office consultation the same day.

How We Do It

While this consultation does not obligate you to hire us, we nevertheless try to make it as informative as possible. We do not treat this as just a "sales pitch." When you come in, all your paperwork will be reviewed, and we will ask you to fill out a short form telling us a little more about the particular facts of your case. (Please see our Forms page for the Initial Interview form.) After Mr. Fahle has reviewed all your information, he will sit down and talk to you about your case for up to an hour at no charge. Once he learns more about the particular facts of your case, Mr. Fahle will explain to you your legal options, his opinion regarding possible defenses to the charges against you, how the legal system works, what you can expect next, and the fee that we would charge should you choose to engage this firm. (Please note that because each case is different, it is our policy not to give quotes over the phone except in exceptional circumstances, such as to potential clients who reside out-of-state. Such circumstances would require a full telephone consultation.)

Once you retain this firm, you can continue to expect the same level of personal attention to your case. Our philosophy is that trials are won by the side that out-works the other side. In most DWI, intoxication assault, or intoxication manslaughter cases, our first order of business is to begin preparing for the Administrative License Revocation hearing. For more information on the importance of this hearing, and how we prepare for it, please see our Articles section.

Next, Mr. Fahle will attempt to speak to all of the witnesses involved in your case, including the police officers who made the stop and arrest. (While the witnesses are not required to talk to us, many of them, including police, will often do so if they are just asked). While some attorneys will rely on investigators to conduct these interviews – and some will not conduct them at all – we have found that only the lawyer who will be trying the case will know the right questions to ask. These interviews also allow the attorney to prepare for what questions not to ask in court.

Next, Mr. Fahle will personally visit the scene where you were stopped. While many attorneys find this to be superfluous, we believe that there is no substitute for visiting the scene in person. By doing so, we can sometimes see things that do not seem important, but that turn out to be important in light of later testimony given by witnesses. For example, one police report stated that the officer had stopped our client because she weaved onto the right shoulder of the road. Because he had visited the scene, Mr. Fahle knew that this particular area of I-10 was under construction, and had concrete barriers within inches of the roadway. These barriers extended from the on-ramp where our client got onto I-10, to the exit ramp where she was pulled over. There was no shoulder to weave onto. It is this level of personal attention to each case that allows us to obtain superior results.

The next step is to prepare the appropriate written motions in your case. Because Mr. Fahle is an experienced appellate attorney and writes numerous legal articles, his knowledge and ability in this area are beyond reproach. Because of Mr. Fahle’s skill in this area, we are often able to resolve cases at the motions stage, without the need for a trial.

Should your case require a trial, however, you will have a strong courtroom advocate on your side. With 14 years of experience in trying criminal cases, John Fahle has an ease and rapport with judges and juries. His greatest strength is his ability to take complex legal concepts and boil them down into easy-to-understand layman’s terms. Too often, when juries don’t understand a legal or scientific principle involved in a case, they simply side with the prosecutor, because they believe that as an agent of the State, the prosecutor must be right. By helping jurors to understand the concepts independently, Mr. Fahle allows them to see for themselves that sometimes the prosecutor or the State’s "expert" witness is simply wrong.

Preparation is the other component of a strong defense. Having reviewed all of the evidence in advance, spoken to the witnesses, visited the scene, hired any of our own expert witnesses where necessary, and thoroughly prepared himself on the law involved in each case, Mr. Fahle will be the most vigilant defender you could hope to have by your side in the courtroom.

What We Don't Do

Just as this is not a general practice, it is also not a "volume" practice. Some firms take DWI and other criminal cases cheaply, with the view that they will plead their clients guilty quickly, and dispose of the case easily. This type of "plea mill" is not the type of criminal defense practice we engage in, nor would we want to.

We take every case with a view that it will go to trial, and we prepare accordingly. If it later turns out that the prosecution offers a plea agreement that is too good for the client to resist (as a legal matter, it is always the client's decision whether to accept or reject any plea offer), then so much the better. We have often had prosecutors offer to reduce DWIs to a class C misdemeanor such as speeding or failure to maintain lane. These are simply traffic tickets, and often are too good to pass up from the client's standpoint. But the way we obtain offers like this is to prepare the case with a view toward trying it. This is what allows us to spot the holes in the prosecution's case, and to exploit those holes during negotiations. If a firm takes every case with a view toward pleading it, on the other hand, they are not left with many options.

There are no guarantees in the law, and no law firm can guarantee you any particular outcome on any given set of facts. What we can and will guarantee you, however, is that we will be with you every step of the way, and we will out-work the prosecution.

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