Stokes Lawrence, P.S.

I have a tough probate case; Kristen Fischer took NO time in returning my call for help. Not only did she take time to explain the process but she encouraged positive performance prior to contract. Truthfully honorable. A true lawyer at heart!

Karolyn Hicks is a professional with a very strong skill set. If you need a litigator, you want Karolyn on your side. Karolyn is also a superior negotiator with excellent communication skills. Whether your need is large or small, corporate, personal or family, Karolyn is the professional to see your case to completion. Additionally, Stokes Lawrence has a very wide resource base to draw upon when preparing your case to achieve a favorable result.

I had never been in a courtroom before August 14, 2017 when I appeared as a respondent to the petition of a relative who had abused her power. I never could have believed that lawyers were hired to bend the truth--even lie out right--as long as they could not be held accountable or unmasked--to secure the outcome desired by their client until that date. Karolyn Hicks was affable, smooth as butter, and in my opinion as shrewd and cynical a professional as anyone I could have imagined. She easily outwitted me in the courtroom. The petition she wrote did not even state the reasons for requiring me to release my relative from liability. In her reply to my response she concocted a simple but convincing argument that the judge fell for. With a Machiavellian sleight-of-hand she transformed my wish to hold the trustee responsible for not having respected the intent and provisions of a family trust into a desire for "unfettered access" to the trust funds. This is a perversion of the truth, and the fact that she had no compunctions trumpeting it says a lot about the firm she works for. My parents, contrary to what she stated, did not give me a direct inheritance not because they did not want to me to decide for myself how I could find meaning and enjoyment in life but because they knew that they could not leave me a direct inheritance without endangering my public benefits. Ms. HIcks similarly elided over the fact that the same faithless relative, whom my parents trusted, against the wishes of my parents, had been refusing disbursements with the net result that Social Security would in all likelihood recoup most of the trust funds upon my death due in part because this same relative is the residual beneficiary of a second trust. To argue that possible Trump cutbacks to Medicaid in Washington State would mean that the trustee, who produced no budget or other quantitative tools, should refuse a disbursement worth 3% of the principal from a trust which had increased in value by $6,000 over the past four years is surely sophistry. Surely not even Ms. Hicks could assert that Medicaid would be slashed by as much as 50% in the unlikely event that Trump got his way. I suspect, too, that there was some level of coordination with the reply of my relation, which contained egregiously counterfactual statements, if not perjury. Difficult to prove, albeit, under these most inauspicious circumstances. But the heart and mind know. I stupidly acceded to the assertion that there had been no self-dealing, when in fact there was really no way for either me or the judge to be know this until I had had the time to hire a professional to look at the accounting that this frankly unscrupulous relative had hastily completed just a day or two earlier. What was the most disconcerting, perhaps, was that there was an apparently not illegal quid pro quo offered by the Stokes & Lawrence attorney in exchange for my releasing this relative from all liability. All I can say is: Stay away from this law firm and this attorney if you value integrity rather than a simple desire to go for the jugular and/or outwit your own identified "opponent" (even if it's a family member). Needless to say, the legal expenses were indirectly assumed by me. Reputations of firms such as this are based on the cases won--no matter how they are obtained--for the client, not on the justice served or the methods employed. The adage that lawyers "go in for the kill" would indeed seem to be warranted by my experience with Stokes Lawrence. What is legal is not necessarily ethical.

Sean Griffee and Kelly Noonan were tremendous with legal advice related to the sale of our business in Issaquah. Thanks Sean!

My attorney was competent. I have no complaints.