One of the two named attorneys here, Johnny D. Houston Jr., sits as an elected judge in Red Bank, Tennessee, and holds a license to practice in both Tennessee and Georgia. That is an unusual line on a defense lawyer's resume: a sitting judge who also runs a Chattanooga trial practice. It is the first concrete thing worth knowing about Houston & Alexander, PLLC, because it shapes the whole pitch.
A firm that can put a working judge at the table is selling courtroom fluency, and that is close to the reassurance a frightened defendant tends to want when picking who will stand next to them in court.
Two names, and a partner who changed
There is a wrinkle a visitor should catch right away, because it looks like an error and is not. The live website now brands the firm as Houston & Underwood, PLLC, after attorney Jay Underwood appears to have joined or replaced the second named partner, yet the domain and this listing still read Houston & Alexander, PLLC.
Most third-party directories still use the older name as well. So the entity a reader reaches under Houston & Alexander, PLLC and the firm shown on the current homepage carry different second names while pointing at the same Chattanooga office and the same lead attorney.
That mismatch is worth naming plainly. It does not signal a scam or a dead listing; it signals a firm mid-rebrand whose paperwork and directory entries have not all caught up, which is ordinary. A cautious client should simply expect to hear the Underwood name on the phone and see Alexander in the web address.
The two attorneys give the practice its spine. Johnny D. Houston Jr. is described as a veteran trial attorney who also holds a judicial seat in Red Bank, a combination that is rare and, handled ethically, genuinely valuable, since someone who presides over cases understands how the far side of the bench reads a defendant. Jay Underwood is a former Division Leader at the Public Defender's office, with extensive trial and appellate experience, which means he has defended a high volume of cases under pressure and knows how appeals get built and won.
A defendant who wants counsel that has spent years inside criminal courtrooms, on more than one side of them, will read those two backgrounds as reassuring. On top of the credentials, Houston & Alexander, PLLC stresses affordable fees, free consultations, and personalized representation, the pitch aimed squarely at ordinary people who are scared and paying out of their own pocket.
It fits the everyday clientele Houston & Alexander, PLLC appears built to serve, people charged with a crime or hurt in an accident who are not wealthy and need to know the cost before they commit. Free consultations lower the barrier to that first, hardest phone call, which for many defendants is the moment representation either happens or does not.
The criminal defense and personal injury work
The practice splits into two halves, criminal defense and personal injury, and the criminal side is plainly the deeper of the two. Houston & Alexander, PLLC lists a long roster of charge types it will take on, and the length of that list is itself informative. It tells a prospective client the firm is comfortable across the whole spectrum, from a first DUI stop to a federal indictment, and is not quietly funneling everyone toward the same three easy pleas.
The two practice areas draw very different clients, and the site keeps them cleanly separated so nobody has to wade through the wrong one.
Criminal charges the firm defends
On the criminal side, the list runs to DUI and DWI, drug charges including trafficking, possession, and prescription crimes, federal criminal defense, assault in its aggravated, domestic, and sexual forms, theft, burglary, robbery, identity theft, and shoplifting, weapon charges, violent crimes, white-collar crimes, internet offenses, expungements, probation violations, and the specific problem of criminal records that trail college students. That breadth is the point. A client facing an unusual or stacked set of charges will likely find each one named somewhere on the site instead of a vague promise to handle anything at all.
The inclusion of federal defense matters most, because federal court is a different animal from state court, and a firm that names it is claiming it can operate there. Expungements and probation-violation work round out the picture with the after-the-fact services people need once a case is technically over, and that whole span sits under Houston & Alexander, PLLC.
The college-records line stands out, since a student facing a charge that could shadow them into a career is a specific client with a specific fear, and naming it suggests the firm has handled those cases before rather than treating them as an afterthought.
Personal injury cases handled
The personal injury half is narrower but still substantial. It covers car, motorcycle, and truck accidents, medical malpractice, nursing home abuse, premises liability, slip-and-fall injuries, dog bites, and bedsore or patient-neglect injuries. Someone hurt in a wreck or failed by a care facility has a clear entry point, and the nursing home and bedsore categories in particular suggest a firm willing to take on institutional defendants, which not every small practice will do.
Pairing injury work with a heavy criminal caseload is a familiar small-firm model, and it lets the same doors at Houston & Alexander, PLLC keep two very different kinds of client moving without turning anyone away.
Ratings, listings, and reaching the office
Outside reputation for Houston & Alexander, PLLC is mostly encouraging, with one honest caveat about volume. Birdeye lists the firm at 4.9 stars from 210 reviews, which is a strong showing and the single best data point available, since 210 is a real sample and not a handful. The Better Business Bureau keeps a profile but marks it Not BBB Accredited, with no star rating shown, common for smaller firms and not damning by itself. FindLaw and Martindale both host attorney and firm profiles, though no ratings surfaced in the search snippets.
GoodFirms has a company page that plainly states no reviews have been submitted yet, so that source adds nothing. AttorneyAtLaw.com carries a positive client review that names both Mr. Houston and Jay Underwood, which usefully confirms the two-name situation at Houston & Alexander, PLLC from an outside vantage. Yelp has a listing for Houston & Alexander, PLLC with 32 photos but no visible review count or score. The weight of the evidence leans clearly positive, anchored by that Birdeye figure.
A prospective client should read the 4.9 as encouraging without treating it as the final word, since any single platform can run high, and the quieter sources hold too little to either confirm or dent it.
Contact could hardly be easier, and for a law firm that counts for a lot. The site lists a phone number, an email address, a physical office on Dayton Boulevard in Chattanooga, and posted office hours that run Monday through Friday from morning into early evening, alongside a free online consultation option.
For a nervous first-time caller, having a real street address, real posted hours, and a free consult all on one page strips out most of the friction of even reaching out. Houston & Alexander, PLLC does the transparent, unglamorous things correctly, which is exactly what a stressed client needs to see before trusting anyone with a case.
The listed email and the online consultation option both mean a client who cannot talk during business hours still has a way in, a real help for people juggling a job and a court date.
Weighed against the obvious alternative, a court-appointed public defender, the trade is straightforward. A public defender costs a defendant nothing, but comes with a crushing caseload and no ability to choose the lawyer assigned. Houston & Alexander, PLLC asks for a fee, and sets against it a free first consultation, a named attorney who has actually sat as a judge, and a partner who came up through the public defender system himself and knows exactly what that office can and cannot give a client.
For someone who can scrape together a private budget and wants a known face across the table, the case for calling Houston & Alexander, PLLC instead of leaning on an overworked public defender is a real one, and because that first consultation is free, testing the choice costs nothing but an hour.
