Jay Winckler

Some lawyers win by outworking the other side; Jay Winckler wins by out-thinking them. A co-founder of Winckler, Harvey & McConnell, LLP in Austin, Winckler has spent decades building a reputation for dissecting a case until he finds the decisive detail that everyone else overlooked. He views litigation as a battle in which he takes the role of aggressor, pressing the defendant, the defense attorneys, and their insurance company through preparation and precise execution. For an injury victim choosing among Austin firms, that mindset matters most in the hardest category of cases he handles: medical malpractice.

Winckler is Board Certified as a trial specialist in Personal Injury Trial Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization. His courtroom work has earned statewide notice — two of his cases, Janice Temple v. James Hansen, M.D. and Angela and Robert Gibson v. Clinical Pathology Laboratories, Inc., were listed among VerdictSearch’s Top Texas Verdicts of 2010. His success has drawn clients from every corner of the state, McAllen to Amarillo and Texarkana to El Paso — a reach few Austin-based trial lawyers can claim.

The recognition from his peers is equally hard to dismiss. Best Lawyers, the Woodward White peer-review publication, has named him Austin’s Lawyer of the Year for Medical Malpractice – Plaintiffs three times, in 2019, 2021, and 2023, and for Personal Injury – Plaintiffs in 2022. He has been listed in The Best Lawyers in America and Texas’ Best Lawyers, and selected as a Super Lawyer by Thomson Reuters in 2003, 2011 and 2012, and every year from 2014 through 2024.

Academic firepower has been a constant throughout his career. Winckler attended the University of South Dakota on a full academic scholarship as a Presidential Alumni Scholar, graduating Phi Beta Kappa with his B.A. in 1978, then earned another academic scholarship to the University of Texas School of Law, where he received his J.D. with honors in 1981.

Winckler is the lawyer to call when a case turns on complexity — a misdiagnosis, a surgical error, a lab failure, or another act of medical negligence where the defense will bury the truth under expert reports and technical jargon. Patients and families harmed by healthcare providers, and anyone with a serious injury claim that demands a certified trial specialist rather than a volume settlement operation, will find his combination of intelligence and persistence difficult to match. The firm offers free consultations and works on contingency, so there is no fee unless there is a recovery.