Blazier, Christensen, Browder & Virr, P.C.

Focus and practice areas

The firm works across business and personal legal matters from its base in Austin. Its practice areas include business and commercial law, estate planning, wills, trusts, and probate. It also handles construction law, taxation, intellectual property, trademarks, real estate, foreclosure law, litigation and appeals. That range covers both the transactional side of running a company and the disputes that follow when deals break down.

The site describes work on contract and tax issues, small businesses, and business disputes. A client might come to the firm to form a company, protect a trademark, plan an estate, or bring a case to trial. Taken together, these areas form a general business practice with a tax and estate emphasis. In my opinion, tax runs as the clearest thread through the firm's work, and the attorneys' backgrounds support that reading.

The transactional side and the courtroom side often connect in work like this. A business the firm helps to form may later need a contract enforced or defended, and the same client relationship carries through both stages. A firm that handles formation, real estate, tax, and litigation can stay with a company as its legal needs change over the years.

How the team is built

The attorneys page names eight lawyers, and their titles map out a clear hierarchy. Kent G. Vestal Jr. holds the managing director role. Paul K. Browder and Justin M. Welch are directors. John C. Blazier is the founder, Thomas F. Virr is a director emeritus, and Fleur A. Christensen is listed as director emeritus in memoriam. John K. Drisdale is of counsel, and Luke Woodward is an associate attorney.

Those titles carry meaning in how a firm organizes its work. Directors usually hold ownership and set direction, of counsel marks a senior lawyer with an ongoing but separate relationship, and an associate is an employed attorney earlier in a career. The emeritus label points to founders and long-serving members who have stepped back from daily practice. The list shows a firm with a settled core and a defined line of seniority.

Beyond the lawyers, the team page lists senior CPAs, accounting personnel, paralegals and administrative staff. The firm keeps accounting staff in house alongside its attorneys. That pairing fits the firm's tax and business work, where legal advice and financial detail often move together. Paralegals and administrative staff handle the filings and records that support the lawyers day to day.

Backgrounds and credentials

The attorney profiles include academic and professional detail for most of the roster. Kent G. Vestal Jr. earned his law degree from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, William H. Bowen School of Law, in 1987. His practice covers arbitration, business, real estate, tax, estate planning, construction and development, and eminent domain. That spread places him across both the transactional and the dispute sides of the firm.

Paul K. Browder holds a finance degree from West Texas State University from 1983 and a law degree from the University of Texas at Austin from 1986. He works in litigation, business formation, intellectual property, estates, trusts and probate, construction, and banking law. Justin M. Welch graduated from the University of Texas School of Law in 1997, and his work covers business litigation, intellectual property litigation, and real estate. Both bring a University of Texas law background to the firm's litigation work.

The founder and the tax roots

John C. Blazier started the firm in 1976, and his own record runs deep in tax. He holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Texas at El Paso from 1966, a law degree from the University of Texas from 1969, and a master of laws in taxation from New York University from 1973. A master of laws in taxation is a further degree beyond the standard law degree, focused on the tax code. He was editor-in-chief of the Texas Law Forum at the University of Texas in 1969, and his practice covers corporate law and tax law.

Thomas F. Virr brings a federal tax background to the firm. He earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Texas in 1967 and a law degree there in 1972. He worked at the Internal Revenue Service as an estate tax attorney from 1973 to 1977, then as a district conferee, and later as an appeals officer through 1984. He is board certified in tax law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization, a credential that calls for demonstrated experience and a passed examination in the field.

Fleur A. Christensen held degrees from the University of Texas at Austin, a bachelor's from 1963 and a law degree from 1969. She was an adjunct professor at the University of Texas School of Law from 1983 to 1985. Her practice covered probate, real estate, estate planning, and eminent domain. Her teaching and her estate work sit alongside the tax and probate strengths that run through the founding group.

Of counsel and associate roles

John K. Drisdale earned his law degree from Baylor University in 1979 and is associated with Drisdale Law Firm PLLC. His work covers business contracts, business formation and dissolution, business finance, mergers and acquisitions, real estate, and entity formation. That mix keeps him close to the firm's business and transactional work. Luke Woodward is an associate attorney at the firm.

Where the firm works

The firm operates from Austin and reaches clients across Texas. Its lawyers work with communities in Travis, Caldwell, Bell, McLennan, Hays, Williamson and Bastrop counties. That footprint covers the Austin metro area in Travis County and the surrounding central Texas counties. The firm keeps two Austin offices, a main location and a north office.

The firm's material describes clients that include businesses, individuals and families. That mix matches the split between its business work and its estate and probate work. A single firm can then serve a business owner on a company matter and the same person on a personal estate plan.

How these matters proceed

The firm's practice areas run on different tracks, and knowing how each moves helps set expectations. Business formation starts with choosing an entity, filing with the state, and drafting governing documents such as bylaws or an operating agreement. Trademark work begins with a search, then an application to the United States Patent and Trademark Office, followed by examination and, in some cases, a response to office actions. Real estate matters turn on contracts, title, and closing, and construction law adds questions of contracts, liens, and defects on top.

Estate planning generally produces a will, and often trusts and powers of attorney, arranged around how a client wants assets handled. Probate then moves through a court after death, where an executor gathers assets, settles debts, and distributes what remains. Tax matters can include planning during a deal and representation before the IRS, the kind of work Thomas Virr handled during his years at the agency. Foreclosure law involves the process by which a lender recovers a property after default, and it touches both real estate and litigation.

Disputes and appeals

Litigation and appeals sit at the contested end of the firm's work. A trial case moves through pleadings, discovery, motions, and, if it does not settle, a hearing before a judge or jury. An appeal then reviews that result on the legal record before a higher court. The firm lists both trial and appellate work, which covers a dispute from its first filing through any later review.

What the record shows

As a reviewer, I read the firm's material as the work of a general business practice with a tax and estate core, staffed by lawyers who earned their law degrees between the 1960s and the 1990s. Five of the named attorneys hold University of Texas law degrees, and two of the founding members built their careers around tax. The founder holds a master of laws in taxation, and a director emeritus is board certified in tax law by the state.

The site states a founding year of 1976 and gives dated credentials for most of its attorneys. It lists eight lawyers, supported by CPAs, paralegals and administrative staff, working from Austin for clients across central Texas. Those facts, the long history and the detailed profiles, are the firmest the site provides.