Davie & Valdez, P.C.

Focus and practice areas

Davie & Valdez, P.C. works on one side of the employment relationship: the employee's. The firm represents workers in Texas and New Mexico who bring claims against employers, and it handles the injury side of that work too.

The employment claims cover wrongful termination, workplace discrimination, sexual harassment and retaliation. Wage disputes sit alongside those, including minimum wage problems, unpaid overtime and nonpayment of wages.

On the injury side, the firm handles work injuries and workers' compensation claims, along with occupational illnesses and diseases. It also takes denied workers' comp claims and appeals, which is a narrower area of practice than the initial claim work.

What that combination means in practice

Employment law and workers' compensation often overlap in a single client's situation. A worker hurt on the job may face a denied claim and a firing in the same year. Keeping both areas under one roof means one client does not have to hire two firms to sort out one sequence of events.

In my opinion, that pairing is the clearest signal of how the firm has chosen to define its work. The practice list stays inside employment and workplace injury, and it goes reasonably deep in both.

How the team is built

Two named attorneys run the firm: John P. Valdez and Roger C. Davie. The firm's own pages describe both as its founders, and both practice in employment and labor law.

John P. Valdez

Valdez is licensed in Texas, admitted in 2004, and in New Mexico, admitted in 2007. He is also admitted to the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, in 2010, and to the U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico, in 2007.

He earned his J.D. from Texas Tech University School of Law in 2004. In June 2017 the New Mexico Board of Legal Specialization certified him in employment and labor law.

His practice covers workers who have suffered severe work injuries as well as employees with wrongful termination and discrimination claims. The federal court admissions on both sides of the state line matter here: employment claims frequently land in federal court, and a lawyer who can appear there in either state has fewer procedural gaps to work around.

Roger C. Davie

Davie is Board Certified in Employment Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization. He has been licensed since 2004, the same year as his co-founder.

His work centers on employees in wrongful termination, workers' compensation and work injury cases in the El Paso area. The site does not state where he attended law school.

Why the certifications carry weight

Board certification in Texas and New Mexico is a formal process. It requires substantial practice time in the field, peer and judicial references, and a written examination. Not every lawyer who practices employment law seeks it, and the boards do not hand it out on request.

Both attorneys hold it, each in his own state. As a reviewer looking for verifiable markers rather than claims, that is the kind of credential worth noting: it comes from a state body, it can be checked, and it is specific to the field the firm actually practices in.

Where the firm works

The principal office is in El Paso, Texas. A second office in Santa Fe, New Mexico operates by appointment only.

The firm also serves clients in Las Cruces and Artesia, New Mexico. Those are meaningful additions given the distances involved in southern New Mexico, where the nearest employment lawyer can be a long drive away.

Both attorneys' licenses cover Texas and New Mexico, and the firm takes cases in state and federal courts in both. El Paso sits directly on the New Mexico line, so a worker's home, employer and worksite can easily fall in different states. A firm licensed in both handles that without referring the case out.

Language and accessibility

The firm offers legal consultations in Spanish. In a border city where a large share of workers speak Spanish at home, that shapes who can realistically use the firm.

It also provides services for Deaf and Hard of Hearing clients. Employment claims run on deadlines and detailed factual accounts, and a client who cannot follow the conversation cannot give the account the case needs.

Both of these are stated plainly on the firm's own pages. They tell a reader something concrete about who the firm expects to walk through the door.

How cases are taken

The firm takes cases on a contingency basis. Under that arrangement, the client owes no fee unless there is a recovery, and the firm carries the financial risk of the case.

Contingency arrangements are common in injury work and less universal in employment law, where hourly billing still appears. For a fired worker without income, the difference decides whether a claim gets filed at all.

The firm publishes this on its home page. It is a structural fact about the practice, and it fits the client base the rest of the site describes.

What the record shows

The firm's public material is unusually specific in places. Bar admission years, federal court admissions with dates, a law school with a graduation year, and the month a specialization board issued a certification: those are checkable against state bar records and court rolls.

Some things the site leaves out. It does not state a founding year, and it assigns no titles such as partner or associate to either attorney. The firm lists no social media accounts.

The picture that emerges is a two-attorney employment and workplace injury firm covering a two-state region from El Paso, with both principals certified by their respective state specialization boards and both practicing since 2004. For a worker in El Paso, Las Cruces or Artesia weighing a termination claim or a denied comp appeal, that is a specific set of verifiable facts to start from.

In my opinion the firm's clearest strength is the alignment between its stated scope and its credentials. The two attorneys are certified in the field the firm practices, licensed in both states it covers, and admitted to the federal courts where these cases often end up.