December Hearsay Contributors
Josh Sherman
Jane Clark Legal
Josh Sherman dedicates his practice to medical malpractice cases. Josh is adm- itted to practice law in Washington and Oregon, and he regularly litigates cases in both states.
Chelsey Butchard
Butchard Law
Chelsey Butchard’s practice is focused on family law. Chelsey is the current family law section president at the CCBA.
Jesse Jacobs
NW Injury Law Center
Jesse Jacobs is a trial attorney representing personal injury clients in Southwest Washington. He is the immediate past president of the CBBA.
Jean Mccoy Landerholm, P.S.
Jean McCoy’s practice focus is real estae transactions and conflict resolution, landlord/ tenant and creditors’ rights.
Left to right: Steven Hogue, Amy Price, Erik Selden (Team Leader), Bryan Dent, Phil Czajka
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.
Presented by
rage (a la the original Riot Grrrl punk movement of the ‘90s) and had a pretty rockin’ time. We sincerely thank everyone for showing up for us year after year, and for our incredibly talented bands for entering the highly anticipated “battle”.
grats to our new reigning
Not only does Clark County have a strangely high number of lawyers in bands, they are all super talented. ...Is there something in the water here??
Jeff Keddie (attorney, Northwest Justice Project), Mike Labbee (attorney, IntelPortland), James Bruhns & Alvin Payne.
Matt Blum (attorney, Arwood & Blum), guest Scott Allen
Bob Dias, David Hankins, Randy Kraut, Mike Roche and Steve Winogradsky (attorney - retired).
Eli Rushbanks (attorney, Dollar For), Jack Green (attorney, Green, Ritchie & Bogar), John Terry (attorney, Andrews Terry Jeffers LLP), Colin McHugh (attorney, McHugh Law, PLLC), Todd Ouska & Geoff Cecil.
Our previous champs: Mila Boyd (Uptown Injury Law), Bennett Brandenburg (Brandenburg Law Firm), Alex Uskoski (Wheeler Boyd), Michael Green (Michael Green Law Office), and John Terry (Andrews Terry Jeffers LLP).
“Zines” are small batch, self-published magazines and were a fixture of the original Riot Grrrl movement. What you’re seeing here is just a condensed version of our ‘24
CCVLP Zine; if you’d like to check out the full thing (it’s pretty cool, if we do say so ourselves), you can check out our digital flip version at:
This link here
All of the little doodles, collages, and handwriting you see throughout were handmade by CCVLP staff and then scanned in to create this zine.
Jeff Green; Michael Green; John Terry; Chris Hughes; Eli Rushbanks
Thank you again to our amazing lawyer bands, our generous sponsors, and our lively attendees. We will see you again next year!
Clark County Bar Association
November 5, 2024
Minutes for the CCBA Board of Trustees Meeting November 5, 2024
1.Called to order 12:04 pm, Wechselblatt, Petersen, Melnick, Larson, Sutanto, Rapp, Mendoza, Hawke and Executive Director Darco
2.October 15, 2024 board meeting minutes: Motion to Approve (Melnick/Hawke) Approved (Sutanto abstained)
3 & 4. Treasurer’s Report (Melnick) Financials in board folder. Better off at present than this time last year when comparing year over year. The Family Law Section has requested an accounting and CCBA reserves and FLS reserves are being analyzed.
5. Membership Committee and Drive (Wechselblatt): 2024/2025 members:370, Non Renewed: 99, New Members: 28, Staff: 37. Compare to October 1,2023: 307 members versus October 1, 2024: 338 members. 2023/2024: 439 members. We need to get 450 members for this fiscal year to meet our budget projections. Discussion of efforts for membership drive.
Mission and Goals for Membership Committee (Petersen) Discussion of ideas to increase membership: have a membership drive event, timing of social functions, combining membership and social committees, bring back BBQ, volunteer opportunities: short term or one time, auto renewal, how to attract members that don’t frequently practice in Clark County. We need a volunteer to compile a list of names of attorneys from the WSBA.
6. Lawyer Fee Survey : tabled to next meeting
7. Lawyer Referral Service: tabled to next meeting
Upcoming Meetings/ Events
Barrister’s Ball 3/8/25
Adjourned 1:02
CLARK COUNTY BAR ASSOCIATION BOARD MEETING
Clark County Superior Court
BENCH/BAR COMMITTEE MEETING MINUTES
November 12, 2024
Persons in attendance: Judge Fairgrieve (John.Fairgrieve@clark.wa.gov), Judge Sheldrick (Emily.Sheldrick@clark.wa.gov), Deb Weshselblatt (Deb.Wechselblatt@clark.wa.gov), Rachel Brooks (rachel@ guardianshiplawgroup.com), Alexander Reaganson (Alexander.Reaganson@nwjustice.org), Jessi Anderson (jessi@ccvlp.org)
- If you have matters that you would like to bring to the attention of the Bench/Bar, you are welcome to contact the above-mentioned members of the committee.
Updates:
Judge Sheldrick: Civil Division Updates
Judicial rotations have now all happened. Judge Snider is housed in the civil division and is working on probate, guardianship, and drug court. Judge Banfield has moved over to the civil division. Judge Retsinas has started her rotation on the family law dockets.
Regarding Unlawful Detainer Actions (UDAs):
Three judges are now on rotation covering UDAs. The main hiccup that is still being figured out is regarding ex parte. Previously, when Judge Sheldrick handled all UDAs, ex parte went straight to her, now with the rotation, there is work to be done figuring out how to run ex parte when there are three judges circulating through the cases. There will be some transition time needed to work out the flow for ex parte within UDAs.
The court has canceled the UDA docket previously scheduled for 12/27/24, the UDA docket on 12/26/24 is still scheduled to take place, however, attorneys should not cite show cause matters onto that docket without prior approval.
Ex parte week trials:
Civil rotation judges who are on their ex parte week are having trials set with them to cover overflow. This is causing some strain to the civil department as that ex parte week is now a bit more substantial. Hopefully this won’t happen too much, but currently it is happening some, and causing some strain.
Odyssey Interruption:
With Odyssey down, the judges are really needing attorneys to step up and let departments know if matters are missing from the draft dockets. Judges are looking for patience from attorneys if the judge appears unprepared for dockeets as the judicial officers are doing their best given the Odyssey service interruption.
Attorneys practicing from out of town may not be getting the updates our local courts are sending out, so hopefully they are paying attention.
Color of Justice Program:
This is a Superior Court Judges Association program that Judge Cornell is organizing. This year we are lucky enough to have Justice Whitener, in addition to judges from Cowlitz Tribal Court, King County Superior Court, and the Western District of Washington US Federal District Court participating.
The group’s presentation will be on 12/12/24 to an audience of middle-school-aged girls of color.
Judge Fairgrieve: Criminal Division Updates
Criminal updates:
Public Defenders Office:
One of the new attorneys at the Public Defender’s Office has started appearing at the criminal first appearances docket. The attorney is able to meet with in custody defendants in the morning, prior to the defendants’ afternoon first appearance. Moving the first appearance docket to the afternoon was partially done to allow for that to happen. That change is making the criminal first appearance docket run a more efficiently.
Currently, in addition to the chief public defender, there have been two additional attorneys hired at the Public Defender’s Office, six total attorneys here are two attorneys who have been hired
Shortage of defense attorneys:
Clark County has used a contract attorney based model for indigent defense for a long time and it will continue to do so until the Public Defender’s Office is appropriately staffed.
Contract attorneys bid on certain chunks of the criminal cases, then as they get appointed eventually they get to a point where they meet their contract numbers for the year and they are done and can’t accept any more. That has happened, Clark County is out of contract attorneys time for the 2024 year.
Indigent defense was able to find a couple of out of area attorneys, and those people have taken some appointments.
There are a significant number of cases coming on every week, and it doesn’t take long to fill up those attorneys.
Last week the court was able to appoint new defendants to the Public Defender’s Office, how ever, at some point they will also reach capacity and at this point we have about another month and a half of the year to go.
Come January 1st, the new contracts will turn over, but for now, we have to make it from now to the end of the year with a very limited supply of defense attorneys. There may be some difficult times from now to the end of the year as far as appointing attorneys for indigent defense.
There is a proposal in front of the Washington Supreme Court put forth by the Washington State Bar Association (WSBA) to significantly reduce the criminal caseloads of public defenders. This was based upon a study showing that caseloads were too high for court appointed criminal defense attorneys to adequately represent their clients. WSBA adopted the findings of that study and forwarded the study on to the Washington Supreme Court with a recommendation that it be adopted lesser caseloads, which effectively would reduce criminal case loads by about 70%--tripling the number of attorneys needed to cover the usual number of cases. Comment period on that has ended. Judge Fairgrieve is not aware of any timeline for adoption by the WA Supreme Court. Statewide we are experiencing a shortage of public defenders, particularly on the east side of the state in the more rural areas. Not sure how this will turn out, but there is a problem with numbers of both criminal defense attorneys as well as criminal prosecuting attorneys.
Juliet Laycoe:
Juliet Laycoe’s investiture will take place on Friday, November 22nd. She will then begin her training cycle and will start taking on commissioner duties in early December.
Deb Wechselblatt: Clark County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office-Civil Division Updates
Chris Cook is the new Interim Civil Chief at the Clark County Prosecuting Attorney’s OfficeCivil Division.
Rachel Brooks: Probate and Guardianship Bar Updates
There is also a shortage of attorneys working in the probate, guardianship, conservatorship areas of law locally at this time. Additionally, the Uniform Guardianship Act was recently amended to include a requirement for the court to appoint an attorney for respondents when a guardianship or conservatorship action is filed. It is hard to know how that requirement will be met given the short supply of attorneys working in this field at the moment.
The Probate and Guardianship bar is going to host a couple of CLEs to try and get more attorneys trained up and ready to help out.
There will be a probate CLE coming up in December.
There will be a Guardianship/Conservatorship 101 CLE offered in January to teach attorneys how to meet their obligations as an appointed respondent’s attorney as well as how to get paid for that work.
Attorneys interested in either CLE who are not already members of the Probate and Guardianship Bar should email one of its officers for more information:
Rachel Brooks: rachel@guardianshiplawgroup.com
Gabby Richards: gabby@cascadialawyers.com
Marissa Bartolucci: MBartolucci@navigatelawgroup.com
Jessi Anderson: Clark County Volunteer Lawyers Program Updates:
CCVLP offices will be closed for winter break from Monday, December 23rd through Friday, January 3rd, reopening on Monday, January 6th.
[Question from Judge Sheldrick confirming the dates CCVLP is closed]
[Answer- CCVLP is closed 12/23-1/3]
CCVLP’s Family Law Program (which assists pro se family law litigants) is closed to additional clients at this moment. There is an extensive list of individuals waiting for an appointment with a volunteer attorney and until we are able to serve many of the waiting persons, no one else will be added to the waiting list.
Respectfully submitted, Jessi Anderson
