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Practice Description: I enjoy working on complex, commercial real estate deals and workouts. I draw on my business background to assist our clients with all phases of their projects: due diligence, acquisition, financing, leasing, sale and troubled properties matters. My clients include both buyers and sellers, lenders and borrowers, developers and contractors, landlords and tenants, creditors and debtors.

Practice Style: I have an undergraduate degree in business and worked in business for 10 years before attending law school. I have been a lawyer for 16 years; I spent my first 7 years in practice as a litigator, sorting out bad deals and representing clients in the federal, state and bankruptcy courts. These experiences influence my approach to our clients' deals and problems: I am a member of each client's business team; my job is to craft the deal or the workout in a way which minimizes disputes, while I remain cognizant of the business forces influencing the client's decisions and help attain a sound business result. At the same time, I appreciate the need for a careful, meticulous eye for the intricacies of the law, and I devour each line in a contract or lease as if I were reading a mystery story looking for clues.

Professional Interests: I enjoy working with professional legal organizations, such as the American Bar Association, to improve the ethical and professional development of lawyers and create opportunities for lawyers to give back to the community. I am starting a three year term on the ABA’s Board of Governors in August 2007. I am also the Editor-in-Chief of the ABA’s Magazine Business Law Today and currently serve on the ABA Business Law Section’s Executive Council, Finance Committee and I am the incoming chair of the Section’s Commercial Financial Services Real Estate Financing Subcommittee.  In addition, I am a member of the ABA’s Standing Committee on Pro Bono and Public Service and chaired the Equal Justice Conference in 2006 and 2007.

Background:
Tousley Brain Stephens, PLLC
1998 to 2001, Real Estate Department

Graham & James/Riddell Williams (Seattle)
1991 to 1998, Bankruptcy, Real Estate and Litigation Departments

J.D., with honors, University of Washington,
1991 (Moot Court Honor Board; Order of the Barristers)

B.S., Business Management & Industrial Relations,
summa cum laude, Seton Hall University, 1988