August 2003

Reading Around

Everett Family Firm Celebrates a Century

"Law" and "the Bell family" seem synonymous in Everett. Three generations of Bells have practiced in Snohomish County, and a fourth-generation member is a recent law-school graduate.
 
It all started with Ralph Bell, who opened an office in Everett in 1903. He went on to become county prosecutor and, in 1912, Snohomish County Superior Court judge, a post he held until he retired in the 1950s.
 
Bell's son Lewis joined an Everett law firm and started Bell & Ingram in 1952. Over the last half century, the firm has grown to 11 attorneys and 22 staff members. Lewis's two sons, Doug and Bruce, went to law school and in due course joined the firm; Doug is now of counsel, but Bruce still works as a partner. And Doug's son Christopher, a Seattle University Law School graduate, is planning to—you guessed it—join his father and uncle at the firm.

From Welfare to the Bar

If you'd asked Tammy Bayard some years back if she ever thought she'd be a WSBA member, she'd probably have said, "No way."
 
Bayard dropped out of high school, got a GED, and found herself a single mother, on welfare for a time, then a student at Bellevue Community College. After getting an associate degree, she went to work for Bellevue District Court Judge David Admire. Six years ago, Admire suggested she consider taking part in the WSBA's Law Clerk Program, a nontraditional means for people to get a law degree without having to go to law school. Admire served as her tutor for four years. Bayard passed the February bar exam and was sworn in by Supreme Court Justice Richard Sanders May 23, 2003. She has joined the Bellevue firm of Veitch, Gaston & Kennedy as a criminal defense attorney.
 The only discordant note in the happy ending comes from Judge Admire. "I won't have my court clerk anymore." Bayard worked for the judge for 10 years.

Preserving the Courts' Pasts

Thurston County's Superior Court has seen a lot of history pass over the clerk's counter in the form of pleadings, filings, and other documents. Now the clerk's office is in the middle of a yearlong project to digitally copy some 15 million pages of court records dating back to 1847. The archive includes all kinds of records covering much of western Washington: in territorial days Thurston County extended to the Canadian border. The $450,000 project will save the county nearly $100,000 a year in storage costs, and free up the jam-packed 1,000-square-foot county vault. Pre-1930 records will be sent to the state archives; later, historically insignificant records will be shredded.
 
Records of another court are also on the Internet. Bar News reader Linda Bell alerts us to "The Proceedings of the Old Bailey," 1674 to 1834, at www.oldbaileyonline.org. It's a fully searchable online edition of the largest body of "non-elite people" ever published, containing reports of more than a hundred thousand criminal trials in London's central criminal court. "The only caveat," Bell warns, "is that it's not a site to be looked at if one has an appointment in 10 minutes!"

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