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Do Things Right, Do Things Well

Family law attorney Michael Yates cuts through the nonsense

Photo by Rick Dahms

Published in 2024 Oregon Super Lawyers magazine

By Andrew Engelson on July 23, 2024

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Ask family law attorney Michael Yates about a memorable case during his 40-year career, and he might gesture to a framed letter hanging on the wall of his tidy office at Gevurtz Menashe in Portland. It’s from an Oregon high school student named Eileen Keen. She writes about how Yates saved her life.

In the early 2000s, Keen’s mother was an immigrant living in a homeless shelter and fighting for custody of Eileen, then 16 months old. Her husband had taken everything from her and now he wanted the daughter, too. Yates agreed to represent her pro bono. That made the difference. The case lasted four years but ended in the mother’s favor.

“Michael never asked for anything from us,” Keen wrote in the letter, which was published in the Oregon State Bar Bulletin in 2015. “He was and is a man of principles, a man of the high road, and someone who believes that if we do things right and we do things well, in the end we will get where we want to go.”

In the Oregon legal community, Yates has a rep as both a skilled litigator and a compassionate, self-effacing man. In person, he’s direct but soft-spoken. He chooses his words carefully. 

“It was a complex case because the dad had taken the child away to another state,” he says. “It was a rewarding case because it had the proverbial happy ending. Eileen’s mother was a wonderful person and she got her daughter back. And the dad was a schmuck.”

In his cases, says Jessy Morris, an associate at Holtey Law, Yates tends to identify core issues and calms the parties involved—qualities she first observed in an acrimonious custody case when he’d been appointed to represent a child. She was representing one of the parents.

“It was just classic Michael,” she remembers. “He said, ‘Let’s cut through this nonsense and focus on what needs to be taken care of—not only from a legal standpoint but a human standpoint.’” His example, Morris adds, inspired her to represent more children and do more pro bono work.

Chip Gazzola, a family law attorney at Gazzola & Warren, who’s known Yates for decades, calls him a lawyer’s lawyer. “He’s very much a gentleman. And a very, very good advocate.”

Yates’ parents were Catholic, and he describes practicing family law as a calling—akin to being a priest: “I minister to the sick and afflicted. I hear their stories. And I try to heal them.” His hint of a smile widens. “At least financially.”


Yates grew up in Rootstown, Ohio, a small rural community east of Akron. His mother was a first-generation Italian American and nurse’s aide; his father grew up poor in Detroit and became an auto worker at a Ford plant. 

Both Depression-era parents encouraged him to get an education beyond high school. “‘Michael, get a college degree and really earn a living,’ they told me,” Yates remembers. “They were very supportive.” He was the first child on either side of his family to go to college.

Repping Rootstown High School on the TV quiz show Academic Challenge. “It’s sponsored by a Cleveland TV station, WEWS, and is in its 55th year,” Yates says.

At Kent State University—not long after the infamous 1970 shooting—Yates studied political science and German. He has no German roots but a close friend needed to take the language and asked Michael to join him. “I fell in love with it,” he says. “The German language, particularly the grammar, is very structured and has some complexity to it. I find that challenging.”

After graduating, Yates received a scholarship from the Goethe-Institut to study German in Bavaria, and then went north of Heidelberg to work at a bottling plant and participate in the fall wine harvest. “I took what is now called a gap year,” he says. His fascination with the German language continues to this day. He takes frequent classes, listens to German podcasts, and visits when he can.

After his year abroad, Yates attended law school at The Ohio State University. (He points to the degree on his wall and emphasizes the definitive article in his alma mater.) By the third year he was bored and ready to graduate: “I wanted to get on with my life. You don’t learn how to practice law in law school.”

With two Kent State classmates during Bikecentennial ’76. It was during this cross-country bike trip that Yates fell in love with the Pacific Northwest.

An avid road-touring cyclist, he went on a cross-country bicycling trip in 1976 that started in the Pacific Northwest, and he fell in love with the region. “God’s country,” he calls it. “I think I’m gonna live here someday,” he recalls thinking.

So J.D. in hand, he and his then-wife moved to Oregon, where he clerked for the Multnomah County Circuit Court. Back then, it had a family law department, and after one court proceeding, Albert Menashe, an attorney representing one of the parties, struck up a conversation. “He seemed to like what I did as a courtroom clerk. And we talked. And he hired me. That’s how I got into family law,” Yates says.

Two years later, uncertain he wanted to stick in the practice area, he joined the Portland firm now known as Wyse Kadish, where he practiced some civil litigation. It didn’t take, and in 1988 he returned to Gevurtz Menashe. Menashe mentored him on helping clients through one of the worst times of their lives, and Yates realized he liked both the legal and emotional challenges of divorce cases.

“I try to understand the emotional agenda,” Yates says. “Was there abuse? Is someone a narcissist? Does someone have borderline personality disorder? Was there a problem with the children growing up? You create a sort of family history.”

He learned early on to set boundaries with clients. He doesn’t take their calls or emails after hours, for example, except in the midst of court proceedings. He doesn’t truck with vindictive causes.

“A cause might be: ‘My husband was terrible and we’ve got to make him pay. We’ve got to hurt him,’” Yates says. He often responds with: “Unfortunately, this is a business transaction involving numbers, and you need to concentrate. I understand your pain. You’ve shared that history, and I appreciate that. But we have to try to move beyond it.”

Gazzola says this careful, calm approach sets Yates apart. “In family law, sometimes it feels like you’re divorcing your opposing attorney. I’ve never had that sense with Michael,” he says.

Gazzola talks up Yates’ handling of a recent case—a messy divorce that involved a collapsing family business. “In the hands of other lawyers, it could have been a nightmare,” Gazzola says. “Michael got it done with the least amount of bitterness and least amount of acrimony. … I imagine he’s quite skilled at telling people what they don’t want to hear.”

Rigorous preparation is another skill Yates learned early on. “Be prepared and organized,” he says. “But don’t be a control freak. Have good people around you to whom you can delegate.”

Gazzola describes Yates as a legal technician who knows the importance of a good paralegal. “That allows him to know the case forward and backward,” he says. “I remember Michael telling me somewhere along the way: ‘I just love discovery.’ I think that’s insane. I find it to be one of the least enjoyable parts of my job.”

Even though Yates goes deep into the research, he remains efficient in the courtroom. “I’m a less-is-more person,” he says. “I get in and get out.”

As for his calm demeanor? He admits it’s not true all the time. “Remember, I’m half Italian,” he says. “I had a very expressive mother. But for the most part, I try to maintain calm. The clients need that.”


In 1998, Yates started his own firm, which went through various names over its 25-year span—most recently Yates Family Law. He became an early adopter of mediation, which had begun in the late ’80s. “Some lawyers wouldn’t do it,” he says. “I did. People want to avoid going to court if they can, because they know court is expensive.”

Since 2017 Yates has served as a judge pro tem for the Multnomah County Circuit Court Judicial Settlement Conference Program, which is essentially court-sponsored mediation. “I try to get cases settled. I’ll suggest solutions, possible outcomes.” About three quarters of cases in conference, he adds, end up settling.

“There’s a professorial aspect to it,” Yates says. “I have to teach you the law. What are the legal principles here? Because that’s what we’re applying to the facts of your case. Maybe you’ll retain half of it, but I think people are appreciative of the fact that I’m trying to explain it.”

All of which has earned Yates a number of awards, including the 2016 Portland Oregon Family Lawyer of the Year and the 2016 Oregon State Bar Family Law Section Professionalism Award.

Morris says Yates’ calm is especially helpful when working with kids. “He comes across as someone who can be trusted,” she says.

“When you have younger children they have more limited communication skills,” says Yates. “They’re much more susceptible to the parents’ thinking.”

About a third of Yates’ pro bono work involves family law cases through Legal Aid Services of Oregon, helping represent people who might otherwise never be able to afford an attorney. Some of these clients have experienced abuse. A current case involves a woman whose husband tried to kill her.

“He’s in the Clackamas County Jail in Oregon City,” Yates says. “I filed a petition and served him in jail. I’ve actually had conversations with him there. We’re going to reach a settlement.”

Gazzola says that this ability to empathize and connect with everyone is one of Yates’ greatest strengths. He mentions a recent case where Yates was representing two children in a contentious custody battle. “My client came out of it with nothing but respect for Michael, and the work he had done with his kids.”

“I’ve talked so many clients off the ledge,” Yates says. “How you go about it is important. You don’t want to make them feel bad about themselves. You want to acknowledge their emotions. But you say: You’re going to put those over here for now.”

It doesn’t hurt that he’s been through two divorces of his own. The first, in 2007, was settled through mediation. “It got resolved fine,” he says, adding that it was hard for their then-8-year-old daughter. Like many children who go through divorce, she was angry at first. But, he mentions, “My first wife and I were on the same page about our daughter and didn’t have major differences. So although there was pain from the divorce, between the two of us, we were able to focus on our daughter and I think she did OK.”

His second divorce, in 2019, was from Multnomah Circuit Judge Jacqueline Alarcon. “We remain good friends,” he says.

Given all this, Yates is somewhat philosophical about marriage. “I’d ask the question: Are human beings meant to live with each other for 20 or 30 years in happiness and harmony? I don’t know. Marriage is a tough gig.”


Last year, Yates shuttered his own firm to return to Gevurtz Menashe for a third time. “I’m in the autumn of my career,” he explains. “And I want to practice law rather than run a firm. The administrative aspect of it was really taxing.”

“When he decided to transition from Yates Family Law to Gevurtz Menashe, he offered to take every single one of his staff with him,” Morris says. “And they all wanted to go.”

“It was a condition of returning that [Gevurtz Menashe] do this,” Yates says, “and they accepted.”

The move gives him more time for his German lessons—as well as his collection of French bicycles. He doesn’t ride as much anymore, but Yates obsessively collects racing bicycles from the ’70s and ’80s. He has upwards of 20 bicycles he tinkers with, searching eBay for parts and perhaps another bike to add to his assortment. He’s got models from Peugeot, Gitane, and Motobécane, and an especially notable Stronglight made by André Bertin. “It’s got all these strong components—crank, pedals, derailleurs,” he says. “I put it together myself.”

Asked if it’s his favorite, he defers. “Please don’t make me pick a favorite,” he says. “It’s like asking a parent if they have a favorite child.”

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