The Benton Franklin Legal Aid Society honored an attorney and a legal technician with its highest awards for their service to the community in 2022.The legal aid society is a nonprofit and provides volunteer attorneys to Tri-City residents who can’t afford to pay legal fees for noncriminal cases. Its attorneys...

Providing legal counsel to criminal defendants and other low-income people facing court proceedings has always been a challenge in the Tri-Cities.Heavy caseloads, low pay relative to private practice, the lack of a local law school and now Covid-19 has not made it easier.But with 2022 now in full swing, the...

Benton Franklin Legal Aid Society, the nonprofit legal services agency that connects clients with volunteer attorneys, pivoted to helping area residents facing eviction in 2021. Barb Otte-PotterBarb Otte-Potter, executive director, said that prior to the pandemic, about 80% of its work centered on family issues. The pandemic, coupled with the...

W. Larry Jefferson Jr.Larry Jefferson Jr. will pay off his law school loans in about seven years.That would not be remarkable if Jefferson were a young attorney, just starting out. He’s not. He’s worked as a public defender in Seattle, and, more recently, Olympia, for more than 25 years since...

Several years ago, I wrote about noncompete agreements for the Tri-cities Area Journal of Business.Legislation passed in 2019 has changed the rules, and it is time for employers to reconsider agreements that include noncompete clauses because the enforceability has been significantly curtailed by the new Washington law.In the olden days...

Bill would create an alert system for missing Indigenous womenAttorney General Bob Ferguson and Rep. Debra Lekanoff, D-Anacortes, plan to propose a bill in the upcoming legislative session to create an alert in Washington state to help identify and locate missing Indigenous women and people.The alert, similar to “silver alerts”...

Benton-Franklin Superior Court Judge Cameron Mitchell is resigning from the bench, effective March 11 after 18 years in office. Gov. Jay Inslee’s office announced the resignation on Jan. 3.Mitchell, the only Black member of the Benton-Franklin bench, was first appointed in 2004 and won his current term in 2020.A Richland...

An independent judge cleared Kennewick Port Commissioner Don Barnes of misconduct in a case that roiled the port for more than two years.Judge Paris K. Kallas overturned the findings of an earlier investigation by an outside attorney.Barnes, the board’s current chair, appealed the results of the investigation into his conduct...

Washington power providers must remove coal from their portfolios by 2025 under rules adopted by the Washington State Department of Commerce and the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission.Commerce regulates 64 publicly-owned utilities, including the public utility districts, cities and rural electric associations that keep the lights on in much of...