June Hearsay Contributors

Judge Susan L. Clark

Clark County Superior Court

Judge Clark graduated from the University of Oregon College of Law in 1986. She practiced law in Washington and Oregon prior to being appointed to the bench in May 2013.

Courtney Mendoza

Petersen Rothermel Law Firm

Courtney Mendoza’s practice focuses on criminal defense and family law, including dissolutions, parenting plans, and child support .

Whitney Hawke

Wheeler Boyd, Attorneys at Law

Whitney Hawke is a partner at Wheeler Boyd. Her practice focuses primarily on family law.

McKinley Irvin attorneys are known for their relentless pursuit of successful results, whether representing individuals in financially complex divorce or high conflict parenting disputes. But perhaps our most noted distinction is our steadfast commitment to protecting what our clients value most.

During my presidency I really wanted to focus on expanding some of our membership benefits, and one of the first ideas I had was to offer free CLEs for our members. I was a little overly ambitious at first, thinking we could immediately offer these monthly, but logistics prevented that (at least for now) so we are starting off offering two free CLEs per year.

We had our first one on May 31st, and longtime attorney Tom Phelan graciously agreed to present (and by agreed I mean I told him he was giving a CLE and he had to say yes because I am his daughter).

The CLE, titled Tips and Tales from Tom: Lessons from Over Four Decades in the Trenches, covered a wide array of thoughts and advice Tom had for attorneys in all stages of their practice based on his 43-year career as an attorney. While I had practiced under Tom for almost 10 years, and already knew a lot of his war stories and general views on the legal profession, I still thoroughly enjoyed in presentation. There were a lot of great reminders about how to be a good lawyer, both in your own practice and in the legal community at large. His remarks about collegiality particularly resonated with me, especially in an age of Zoom court/meetings and fre- quent emails, where a lot of comradery that was around when I began practicing has been lost. We no longer spend hours at a time sitting in court with one another, talking to our coworkers and adversaries. Instead of meeting up to discuss cases, we often resort to quick and somewhat impersonal emails to try and resolve things. And while all of this can often make our practices run more smoothly and can definitely be a more efficient use of our time, it can sometimes come at a cost. I hope that we can all strive to maintain the personal connections and relationships with others in the profession despite all the technological advances that have occurred and will no doubt continue in the future.

Our next free CLE will be in the Fall, so keep an eye out for the announcement. And as always, if anyone has any additional comments or ideas on how to improve our member benefits, feel free to reach out to me.