San Antonio sits at the meeting point of I-10, I-35, and I-37, which makes it one of the busiest freight corridors in Texas. A loaded semi can weigh twenty times what a passenger car weighs, and when one of them is involved in a crash, the case that follows looks nothing like a typical car accident claim. It usually means multiple insurance policies, federal trucking regulations, and a trucking company’s legal team that got involved before the wreck report was even filed. Michael Cowen built his entire practice around that difference, and the path he took to get there started well outside a courtroom.
A Law Degree That Started With a Federal Clerkship
Cowen earned his bachelor’s degree from Texas A&M University in 1991 and his law degree from the University of Texas at Austin School of Law in 1995, where he posted the top score on the Texas Bar Exam. His first job out of law school was clerking for Judge Reynaldo G. Garza, followed by a stint at a corporate law firm in New York.
Neither of those jobs involved representing injured people. That changed in 1997, when Cowen moved into personal injury work full time and began focusing specifically on 18-wheeler and commercial vehicle cases involving catastrophic injury and death, a decision that shaped the rest of his career.
A Bar Card That Covers More Than One State
Cowen is licensed to practice in Texas, New Mexico, and Georgia, and admitted to a long list of federal courts: the Southern, Eastern, and Western Districts of Texas, the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York, the Northern District of Illinois, the District of New Mexico, the Western District of Oklahoma, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, and the U.S. Tax Court. That’s an unusually wide federal footprint for an attorney based in a single Texas city, but it makes sense given the kind of cases he handles. A trucking company involved in a wreck in San Antonio might be headquartered in another state entirely, insured out of a third, and represented by lawyers who routinely remove cases into federal court. Having standing admission across that many jurisdictions means Cowen doesn’t have to scramble for local counsel or pro hac vice approval every time a case crosses a state or district line.
Betting the Practice on Trucking Cases
Trucking litigation runs on federal regulations that a standard car accident case never touches, things like hours-of-service logs, maintenance records, and multiple layers of insurance covering the driver, the trucking company, and whoever owns the trailer or cargo. Cowen is board certified in both truck accident law, a certification he’s held since 2019, and personal injury trial law, which he’s held since 2001. Board certification in Texas isn’t self-declared. It’s issued by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization after an attorney passes a written exam, meets minimum caseload and trial requirements in that specific practice area, and clears a peer review process, and truck accident law is one of the newer certification categories the board offers, which is part of why relatively few Texas attorneys hold it.
Over more than 25 years of practice, Cowen has tried more than 120 jury trials and handled thousands of personal injury cases. His published verdicts include a $26 million wrongful death settlement, a $17.5 million product liability case, and a $14 million personal injury verdict. His firm, now known as Cowen Law Car & Truck Accident Lawyers, has taken on more than 1,000 trucking cases to date, including a published $11.65 million trucking settlement.
Recognition Built Over a Career, Not a Single Case
Cowen has been named a Texas Super Lawyer, one of the Best San Antonio Lawyers in 2015, 2016, and 2021, and has appeared on both the Top 20 and Top 100 Texas Verdicts lists, rankings that track the size of jury verdicts and settlements reported across the state each year rather than any kind of paid placement. San Antonio Scene named him one of its Top 50 Personal Injury Plaintiff Lawyers from 2017 through 2019. Recognitions like these, tied to actual verdict data and peer nomination rather than advertising spend, are part of why they carry weight within the legal community even though most injured clients never see the underlying rankings themselves.
Teaching Other Lawyers the Trade
Cowen didn’t stop at building his own caseload. He wrote “Big Rig Justice: A Comprehensive Guide to Maximizing Value in Truck Accident Cases,” a book aimed at other plaintiff’s attorneys handling trucking litigation, and has published multiple articles on evidence and injury valuation in these cases. Since 2018, he’s run Cowen’s Big Rig Boot Camp, an annual continuing legal education seminar focused entirely on trucking litigation, and he hosts the Trial Lawyer Nation podcast, where he talks trial strategy with other plaintiff’s attorneys around the country.
His speaking history goes back to at least 2017 and covers specific, technical corners of trucking litigation that don’t come up in general personal injury practice: cell phone forensics in accident reconstruction, since a driver’s phone records can establish distraction in the moments before a crash; virtual trial tactics conducted over Zoom, a skill set that became suddenly relevant industry-wide starting in 2020; and negligent training claims, which target a trucking company’s hiring and training practices rather than just the driver’s conduct behind the wheel. He’s presented on these topics at American Association of Justice conventions, Academy of Truck Accident Attorneys symposiums, and state bar CLE seminars across the country.
Leadership Beyond His Own Cases
Cowen serves on the board of the American Association of Justice, chairs the Academy of Truck Accident Attorneys, sits on the board of the Texas Trial Lawyers Association, and serves on the Attorney Information Exchange Group’s board of directors. Those aren’t honorary titles. Each of those organizations sets standards, shares litigation resources, or trains other plaintiff’s attorneys, and holding leadership positions across four of them at once reflects a fairly unusual level of involvement in the trucking litigation bar specifically, rather than personal injury law more broadly.
The Firm Today
Cowen Law Car & Truck Accident Lawyers now includes Malorie Peacock, an attorney who holds a board certification specifically in truck accident law, the same certification Cowen holds and one that only a small number of Texas attorneys carry at all. Having two board certified truck accident attorneys under one roof is uncommon for a firm of this size. The firm takes truck accident cases on a no-cost basis, meaning clients don’t pay unless the firm recovers compensation for them, and offers free consultations Monday through Friday.
