Patty L. Grossman, Attorney

Patty has practiced law in California and Washington for 31 years as well as served as a business law instructor at the collegiate level. Her principal areas of law practice include Family Law, Collaborative Family Law, Landlord/Tenant issues, Real Estate Law, and Estate Planning.

Patty enjoys being in the "trenches" when it comes to representing clients. That means that she does her best when combining her legal knowledge with her skills as a counselor; being able to ask the right questions at the right time based upon attentive listening to what has been said by the client or the witness.

Patty decided that the ability to reflectively listen and provide resolutions to problems presented by clients was so important to the practice of law that she became a certified mediator. She has mediated parenting plans, property issues, business disputes, and various claims issues. She sees the benefits of mediation in many cases outweighing regular litigation because the clients truly are able to be heard without the court procedures and rules of evidence preventing the free flow of communication towards resolution of disputes. Patty's experience is that people often feel that they are not being heard. Any representation by her, whether in a family or landlord-tenant matter, as a mediator, or in the mediation arena, will strongly involve the use of communication skills that offer the client an opportunity to be heard for a change.

Seeing the benefits of mediation led Patty to add collaborative family law to her areas of practice. Patty strongly advocates collaborative family law when there are children in the home.

Overall, Patty's devotion to her clientele and deep interest in people and their problems is reflected in her practice. Her belief is that everyone has a "story" or a history of events that have occurred in life that may be presented in the legal arena. It is the presentation of that story in a courtroom or alternative dispute resolution forum (collaborative practice or mediation) in an effective and professional manner that attracts Patty to the practice of law.

Patty's three decades of legal experience makes her a very strong and knowledgeable advocate for her clients. Over the course of her career, she has taken a couple of side tracks in real estate and as a chemical dependency counselor, but always came back to what interests her most and what she does best: practicing law from the heart as a peoples or community advocate.