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In today's world, decisions are made quicker than ever and often have unseen ramifications down the road. A business needs advisors who understand this and work at the speed of business.

Unlike many attorneys, I have spent considerable time working in the corporate world and understand how business works. My business background coupled with my legal experience makes an unbeatable combination and allows me to become a trusted advisor for your business.

My practice is focused on helping small businesses grow and prosper. The range of practice areas and services I provide are designed to be complementary to the small business owner and provide a single point of contact for most legal needs the entreprenuer may have as they transition from startup to operations to dissolution or sale of the business.

The areas of law I have particular expertise include business law, family law, trusts and estates, wills and probate and not for profit organizations.

I find the current practice of law to be quite antiquated in some fundamental ways and run my practice like a business, because it is a business. I sell time, my time, and I am still trying to find a way to make more of it, but for now, time is in finite quantity.

To achieve the objectives of the representation for my clients, I focus on being efficient and effective. I try to offer flat fee services, wherever possible, because this places the burden on me to be efficient, rather than relying on a traditional hourly rate which provides a clear incentive to not be efficient. In some cases, an hourly rate is simply the only way to bill, but the mindset on being efficient remains in play as I actively try to minimize the costs passed on to the client.

If you are currently looking for an experienced attorney that takes time to understand your needs, give me a call.

Updates to the Website:

I recently added a section I am calling the legal encyclopedia. This section is a series of articles on Nolo.com that answer practically every legal question you could ever have. Please take a few minutes to browse the section and send me your thoughts.

I recently reached an agreement with the folks at LegalZoom.com to provide low cost legal forms on my site for clients and potential clients. Click here to go to the legal forms page for more information.

Recent Posts

August 31

Abuse of Protection Orders

While this is probably not going to make me popular, it needs to be said that the ease in which potential litigants receive a protection order has made the process ripe for misuse.

I have sat in the Domestic Violence Protection Order docket on more than one occasion and seen flagrant abuse of the process, where one party is seeking first mover advantage for a family court dispute. The court rightfully errs on the side of caution in these cases. No one wants to be sitting on the bench and deny an order only to see headlines on the front page when the situation blows up and someone is injured. There should be some demonstrable level of threat of injury other than I think he/she might do something bad, which is often all that is needed to receive the protection order.

I can see the DV advocates running with this, saying something to the effect that I am advocating that we wait until domestic violence occurs before the court steps in, which isn't exactly what I am suggesting. Rather, I think that there should be penalties levied against the accuser when it becomes clear that the allegations made to obtain the DVPO were made under false pretenses solely for the purpose of gaining some degree of leverage in another matter before the courts in a different courtroom.

3:03 PM GMT | Read comments(0)

August 08

DV and Dissolutions

Every once in a while, a client catches me off guard. Thursday, I met such a client. She was the victim of serious domestic violence, her husband beat her up so bad that she was hospitalized for 2 weeks. Her husband pled to Assault 2. Without divulging privileged information, it made me wonder how someone could inflict such abuse on the person they chose to spend their life with. We learned in pre-school not to hit each other.

Where there is documented domestic violence, special attention needs to be paid to any agreements made in a dissolution and the attorney needs to be aware of subtle signs that the power imbalance of the domestic violence situation is not influencing the resolution.

I will be sponsoring a special CLE for Domestic Violence and Dissolutions sometime later this fall for attorneys in the Pierce County area and will post more details as the date approaches.

4:09 PM GMT | Read comments(0)

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Mailing Address:

703 Pacific Avenue

Tacoma, WA 98402

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Phone: (253) 237-1736

Secure Fax: (253) 237-1730

Toll Free: (888) 253-1002

Email: richard@richardricketts.com

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Law Offices of F. Richard Ricketts, PLLC

Serving satisfied clients since 2003.