Voting for judicial officers is hard, even for well-informed voters. This is especially true for our King County Superior, District, and Municipal Court judges, where their opinions are unpublished and there is often limited exposure to their work. Voting for Appellate and Supreme Court judicial candidates can be no less difficult.

While attorneys understand very well the argument of plausible deniability in the courtroom, it is far more difficult to accept that defense in the board room. In other words, when something walks like a duck, squawks like a duck, there is a high probability in the world of business that it is… a duck.

Over 200 King County Bar members joined a sold-out house at Benaroya Hall on Monday September 9 for an evening of lively conversation and insight into the life and career of Justice Jackson.

Law school taught me how to think like a lawyer. My work taught me how to put what I learned into practice. I had smart and generous mentors and interesting work that kept me busy and growing. That was my recipe for success. It took my participation in the Ladder Down program to understand what I was missing — the importance of networking and marketing, building my own book of business, and the power of a group of supportive colleagues, outside of my own practice, to push my boundaries and expand my opportunities.
 

In recent months, the Washington Supreme Court issued two opinions balancing competing goals at the core of our judicial system — our desire for finality and our desire for correct decisions. In both cases, all of the justices agreed there was an error but disagreed over what, if anything, to do about it. The majority in each case held the Court could and should address the error. The dissenting justices believed that principles of finality precluded relief. Below I discuss these cases and then offer my observations about why I believe the argument for valuing error correction over finality was much stronger in one of them.

The law is a tradition-bound endeavor. Judicial decisions are constrained by long-established precedent (well, at least they used to be) as are the workings of the court. An attorney visiting the King County Law Library when it was first established in 1919 would not have felt too out of place in the law library (or courthouse) of 2019. Then came the pandemic [cue the sound of a record scratch] and we were all thrust into the future. Unlike public libraries, who had embraced eBook collections years ago, public law libraries were still tied to print collections. But not for lack of trying. For years I, and other law librarians, lobbied legal publishers to allow our patrons to check out eBooks and were always met with a resounding no. With the onset of the pandemic, Lexis quickly pivoted and created remote eBook access for public law library patrons. It was a game changer for KCLL and we proceeded to change the composition of our collection from almost exclusively print to primarily digital.

Our clients in the Neighborhood Legal Clinics experience a wide range of legal issues and disputes, though there are a few legal issues that are most common and which NLC has a lot of experience with.

One of the more popular quotes you hear in business and leadership development circles is, “Knowledge is having the right answer; intelligence is asking the right question.”

I recognize the wisdom in that statement having just finished work on a high-profile Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceeding that concluded with a confirmed, consensual plan. Our firm was retained in this particular case by counsel for the senior, secured creditor who was seeking an expert opinion on the feasibility of debtor-provided projections included in a reorganization plan.

A new client calls your office. He explains how he was injured on the job. You figure, “great, a new worker’s compensation case!” After listening further, the client tells you he works for the US Postal Service. A federal employee. You immediately stop the conversation and tell the client you don’t handle federal workers’ compensation cases, and what’s more, you don’t know anyone who does. The client hangs up and is left on his own.

The empirical data on the adjudication of allegations of negligent conduct by defendant entities by laypersons in a courtroom setting demonstrates the plenary role of heuristics leading jurors to utilize the peripheral route when cognitively processing the voluminous data conferred upon them. In fact, it was Richard E. Petty and John Cacioppo who developed the dual process theory of the ontogenesis and augmentation of disposition by the layperson, which we now call Elaboration Likelihood Model or ELM for short. ELM considers the variables of attitude change approach. Central and peripheral routes impact conceptualization, retention, re-verbalization and the modification of longitudinal comportment. We would recite key findings and lessons directly from the journal publications, but we worry you would find them too pedantic.