Julie A. Kays

Sommer B. Clement represents developers, contractors, design professionals, property owners, and businesses in construction law, construction defect litigation, real estate disputes, and contract matters. With more than 20 years of litigation experience, she helps clients address disputes efficiently while protecting their business and project objectives. Sommer advises clients on construction contracts, design and consulting agreements, real estate transactions, and risk management issues ar...

James Gradel, a partner in the firm's Commercial Finance and Real Estate Finance practices, has more than 25 years of experience representing institutional and private lenders and borrowers in secured and unsecured debt financing transactions. He focuses his practice on senior and mezzanine financing of leveraged buyouts, construction and permanent real estate loans, multilender loan syndications and participations, intercreditor transactions, high yield note offerings, credit enhanced bond f...

BACKGROUND Karl's practice focuses on patent prosecution of computer engineering and computer science matters. His expertise includes drafting and prosecuting utility and design patents in the United States and in many foreign jurisdictions. Karl has drafted and prosecuted patents in many different technical fields, including: telecommunications, distributed systems and cloud computing, audiovisual content distribution and set-top boxes, automobile head units, smart signs, video encoding, wir...

Susan Foster, a partner in the firm's Litigation practice, focuses her practice on antitrust and trade regulation counseling and litigation as well as intellectual property, advertising and other complex business and financial litigation. In her counseling practice Susan assists clients with a full range of antitrust and marketing issues including distribution counseling, advertising and promotion issues, strategic alliances and Hart-Scott-Rodino premerger notification matters. Her clients en...

John Whitaker is a litigator who counsels clients on the protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights, including patents, copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets. John has served as trial counsel in several cases involving various technologies and forms of intellectual property rights. He routinely represents technology clients in the software, medical device, and telecommunications industries, and he also helps artists and authors to protect their original works. John has rep...

Scott Henderson is a business attorney whose clients include dentists, veterinarians and other health care professionals. He provides advice in such areas as practice transitions, partnerships, real estate and employment matters. Mr. Henderson’s representation includes the drafting of purchase and sale agreements, employment agreements, options to purchase, leases and similar documents. He also organizes professional practices into partnerships, corporations, limited liability companies...

Mica D. Simpson is a top attorney recognized by Best Lawyers in the practice area(s) of Construction Law. Mica D., who practices law in Seattle, Washington, has been recognized since 2026. This recognition is based on an exhaustive peer-review survey, reflecting the high esteem in which Mica D. is held by other top lawyers in the same geographic and legal practice area.

Marissa Alkhazov is a top attorney recognized by Best Lawyers in the practice area(s) of Litigation - Insurance, Personal Injury Litigation - Defendants and Product Liability Litigation - Defendants. Marissa, who practices law in Seattle, Washington, has been recognized since 2027. This recognition is based on an exhaustive peer-review survey, reflecting the high esteem in which Marissa is held by other top lawyers in the same geographic and legal practice area.

Steve Berman is a nationally renowned class-action lawyer who has dedicated his career to fighting for consumers, investors, employees and other plaintiffs harmed by corporate misconduct. As co-founder and managing partner of Hagens Berman, Steve has led some of the most influential and complex litigation in state and federal courts, securing settlements valued at hundreds of billions of dollars and obtaining historic reforms across a wide range of industries. Steve's trial experience has ear...

Jim Flaggert focuses on estate planning, administration of trusts and estates, business-succession planning, charitable planning, and estate and trust disputes. He creates charitable trusts and foundations and limited liability companies and partnerships, and assists in creating and funding insurance trusts and qualified personal residence trusts. Jim assists clients with generation-skipping transfer tax planning, and with grantor retained annuity trusts, intentionally defective grantor trust...