MM
Practice Areas
Biography
Texas State Bar Number: 24103128 | Licensed: November 3, 2017
When someone is searching for a criminal defense attorney in San Antonio, they are usually looking for a specific combination of things: someone who knows the law deeply, someone who has actually been inside courtrooms fighting for defendants—not just watching from the sidelines—and someone who understands the community they are defending. Mario Moreno checks all three. He is a Trial Attorney at Barton & Associates, Attorneys at Law, a proud San Antonio native who graduated summa cum laude from a San Antonio university, earned his law degree cum laude from Texas Tech University School of Law with a concentration in Criminal Law and Innocence, gained his first trial experience defending clients in New Mexico courts as a public defender attorney, sharpened those skills at the Bexar County Public Defender’s Office after returning home, and built his private practice criminal defense career in San Antonio before joining Barton & Associates. He did not stumble into criminal defense—he studied it in college, concentrated in it during law school, chose it as his first job, and has been committed to it at every stage of his career since. For a person facing criminal charges in Bexar County or anywhere in South Texas, that depth of focused, deliberate preparation is exactly what their defense demands.
Mario Moreno’s academic record is not simply impressive—it is directly relevant to the quality of representation he delivers to criminal defense clients. Every credential he earned was chosen with criminal defense in mind, creating a foundation of legal knowledge that most defense attorneys never receive.
That combination—a summa cum laude undergraduate degree in criminology, a cum laude law degree, and a criminal law and innocence concentration—represents one of the most focused and academically distinguished preparation paths for criminal defense practice of any attorney currently working in San Antonio.
Mario Moreno began his legal career the way the most serious criminal defense attorneys begin theirs—in a public defender’s office, handling real cases with real consequences from day one. There are no soft-landing entry-level assignments in a public defender’s office. Clients are counting on you, cases go to trial, and attorneys develop genuine courtroom instincts under real pressure rather than in simulated environments.
Education
- B.A.
- Criminology and Criminal Justice — Our Lady of the Lake University
- San Antonio
- Texas
- graduated Summa Cum Laude. Graduating summa cum laude requires a grade point average at the very top of the graduating class—typically a 3.9 or higher. For a degree in Criminology and Criminal Justice
- this means Mario Moreno did not simply pass courses covering the criminal justice system—he mastered them at an elite academic level before he ever set foot in a law school classroom. Juris Doctorate (J.D.) — Texas Tech University School of Law
- graduated Cum Laude
- with a Degree Concentration in Criminal Law and Innocence. Graduating cum laude from law school signals academic performance in the top tier of the graduating class. The Criminal Law and Innocence concentration at Texas Tech is a specialized curriculum—the same program completed by fellow Barton & Associates attorney George Manning—that goes beyond standard criminal procedure to examine wrongful conviction
- the causes of unjust outcomes
- and the legal mechanisms available to prevent and correct them. An attorney trained in innocence-focused criminal law approaches every case with a sharpened skepticism toward the prosecution’s narrative and a deeper understanding of how evidence can be misread
- how identifications can be unreliable
- and how the system can fail a defendant when an attorney is not paying careful enough attention.