As we watch the days in this month grow shorter and the nights longer, this world can feel isolating. Therefore, I hope that cozy gatherings and holiday celebrations foster connection and a spirit of generosity.

As we wind down the year, and folks take well-earned time off during the Holidays, it is a good time to take stock of the year for our Court. We started the year with worrisome trends of increased filings in eviction cases and civil protection orders. 

The KCBA Board of Trustees held their Board meeting on October 16, 2024. After President Erin Overbey called the meeting to order, she welcomed the trustees, staff, and guests to the meeting.

Did you know? At the New Lawyers Division we believe great mentors deserve great recognition! Each year our board accepts nominations for the Mentor of the Year award which is awarded in person at our annual Spring Soiree. Do you have a mentor that has made a difference in your career? Guided you in your practice? Taken the time to serve as an advisor or a coach? Please consider recognizing him/her/them with a nomination for Mentor of the Year! Nominations can be made directly on the NLD page of the KCBA website or using the handy QR code provided here. Nominations are due on or before December 15, 2024. 

You don’t have time. You’ll lose the audience. You can’t afford it.

You sit at your desk and stare out the window. You contemplate your opening statement, your key witness exams, even how you might handle voir dire (please tell us you think about this before trial!). You’ve spent weeks if not months thinking about your case to this point. You know it inside and out. You know what you want to say and what you want the jury to hear. Why are you considering so many introductory comments and roundabouts? Why wait to give it to them straight?

We live in an era of billionaire activists—one-man political parties—who’ve found that they can push past our plodding political process by opening their checkbooks to get initiatives on the ballot, or bankrolling a Supreme Court justice, or even setting up a lottery to reward voter registration. As the late Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen purportedly said: “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.”

But I’d like to challenge them to answer a higher calling. Provide free tuition for Washington state law students who will commit to helping those without access to justice or practice in remote locations where legal help, like Sasquatch, is most difficult to find. It’s been piloted in at least two medical schools!

KCBA’s newest legal aid program recently turned two years old and has been successfully helping kinship caregivers around the state with their legal issues, especially minor guardianship. The Legal Advice And Referral for Kinship Care (LAARK) program is staffed by two full time attorneys, one part time legal assistant, and is supervised by the statewide kinship care legal aid coordinator. It is separate from KCBA’s Kinship Care Solutions Project (KCSP), but the two programs work closely together, even referring cases to each other when needed. LAARK is a statewide program that provides consultations and legal advice and does not have an income limit. LAARK does not provide representation in court, but does provide brief and extensive services to eligible clients, which includes multiple consultations, help drafting court documents, and advice on preparing for court. KCSP is for King County residents who are under 200% of the Federal Poverty Level and matches clients with volunteer attorneys for their minor guardianship cases. Sometimes, Paul McVicker, the KCSP Staff Attorney, will advise clients who haven’t yet been placed with a volunteer. When LAARK has a client who is eligible for KCSP, they refer them to the program to get on the list for a pro bono attorney. This month’s PBS spotlight highlights a client who received help from both of KCBA’s Kinship programs, with a successful outcome!

In the world of legal research, it seems that change is the only constant. For those of you who are regular Fastcase users through the WSBA’s platform you may have noticed that things look a bit different lately. Fastcase merged with vLex to create vLex/Fastcase. While you may not be familiar with vLex, (they didn’t have a big market share in the US prior to the merger) it is one of the fastest-growing legal tech companies internationally. vLex was founded in Spain and is a major player in foreign and international law research. With the merger, vLex/Fastcase claim to have formed “the world’s largest law firm subscriber base with more than one billion legal documents from more than 100 countries.”

The King County Bar Association (KCBA) Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Luncheon Committee is pleased to announce that the Annual MLK Jr. Celebration Luncheon will take place in person on Friday, January 17, 2025, at the Seattle Convention Center from 12:00 pm to 1:30 pm. The committee warmly welcomes the keynote speaker for this year’s luncheon, Marsha Currin McGriff, Ed.D, Vice Chancellor for Equity and Inclusion at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Dr. McGriff earned her bachelor’s degree in political science and her master’s degree in education from Tuskegee University, and her Doctor of Education in Interdisciplinary Leadership from Creighton University. A veteran higher education leader, she has dedicated her career to advancing systemic cross-cultural equity and implementing the tools of inclusive excellence.

In Washington, child support and whether either parent of minor children in a family law proceeding should be ordered to pay a child support transfer payment is based upon the economic table established by the state and set forth at RCW 26.19.020. RCW 26.19.075 identifies a five-point, discretionary, non-exclusive list of reasons to justify a deviation from the basic or standard child support calculation...