About Bob Geballe

Bob Geballe Articles written 35

Bob Geballe is a longtime journalist based near Seattle. He has written for Washington Law & Politics and Super Lawyers for two decades, as well as for other local and regional publications. He has also worked for PBS NewsHour, Frontline, and network television stations in Seattle and Boston. He is a full-time high school teacher, specializing in science and visual media. In addition, he loves to hike, garden, cook and travel, and spend increasing amounts of time with his three grandchildren.

Articles written by Bob Geballe

All the Awards

There’s not much room left on Laura Tamez’s shelf

Of all the awards bearing Laura Tamez’s name, one is especially meaningful to her: the Rachel Ambler Empowerment award, given by the Texas Trial Lawyers Association Women’s Caucus, and named for an Odessa personal injury attorney and close friend of Tamez’s who died in a car accident during a 2022 dust storm. The award recognizes a Texas attorney who carries on Ambler’s commitment to supporting women in the legal profession. “Rachel was a warrior of justice,” Tamez says. “She was …

Shoring Up the Safety Net

Blake Marks-Dias helped expand mental health services to vulnerable kids 

For years, a hole in Washington state’s social safety net prevented undocumented immigrant and refugee kids from getting care for complex mental health issues. Then in 2021, Blake Marks-Dias and his pro bono legal team got involved. “This is one of the most underserved, least-resourced groups in our country,” says Marks-Dias, co-managing partner at Corr Cronin in Seattle. “Good things aren’t just going to happen to them. It does require the legal system to get justice for them.” The …

Lemon Aid

Jordan Reich helps those who get stuck with faulty new cars 

Cars are practically in Jordan Reich’s blood. “My dad loved new cars; my brother loved old cars and had a repair shop in Riverside, California. I grew up working on them,” Reich says. He doesn’t get his hands dirty anymore, but Reich is still elbow-deep in auto issues. His solo firm, Seattle Lemon Law, is one of the rare ones dedicated to lemon law. That’s not to say it was a straight path for his career. Reich says it’s been more like the Formula One track in Nürburgring, Germany: …

Taking on Fox

Thomas Clare’s ‘save the company’ legal work ended with one of the most publicized settlements of 2023

The most consequential litigation of Thomas Clare’s career began with a phone call on a quiet Thanksgiving weekend at his Alexandria home in 2020. Things didn’t stay quiet for long. “It was Dominion Voting Systems,” Clare recalls. “They were requesting that our firm join their litigation against Fox News and other media companies which had been spreading false stories about the integrity of Dominion’s voting machines. I was thrilled to get the call and very honored that Dominion …

Shaping Seattle

Faith Li Pettis has helped fund major community projects and guide the city’s quest for affordable housing

Government finance law might not sound like the most riveting practice area to everyone, but don’t tell that to Faith Li Pettis. “I drive around Seattle and I’m constantly telling my family, ‘That’s bond work’—that was done with bonds,’” says Pettis, who has spent 30 years working on some of the most influential public bond issues in the state. She ticks them off. “We underwrote the Mercy Housing complete renovation of the old Navy barracks known as Building 9 at Magnuson …

Going 25 for 25

Perennial Super Lawyers listees reflect on the past quarter-century

To help commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Washington Super Lawyers list, we sat down with six of the attorneys whose names have appeared every year since the list was first published in 1998. Each hailed from somewhere else, coming to Seattle in search of everything from temperate weather to racial tolerance. Each found a home and a calling, and stayed to help shape the area’s rich legal culture. How did you end up in Seattle? Kay Frank, MacDonald Hoague & Bayless, Seattle; …

Building Trust

It’s just one of the lessons Geoffrey Brown learned during his tour of duty in Bosnia

When Geoffrey Brown entered the law program at Notre Dame in 1997, he cut a slightly different figure than the typical first-year student. He was older (just shy of 26), married, and had seen the world. For 2½ years he was an active-duty Army field artillery officer, much of that as part of the U.S. contribution to the NATO peacekeeping mission in Bosnia. “That year I spent in Bosnia taught me some things I will never forget,” says Brown, who practices plaintiff’s personal injury law at …

The Atlas of Legal Aid

If Salvador Mungia had his way, ‘justice for all’ would be a given

In the living room of a small house in the blue-collar Lakewood suburb of Tacoma, a black-and-white TV sits on a coffee table. Sprawled on the couch is a 7-year-old kid. On the screen, the judge hands the verdict to the clerk. “In the Superior Court of the State of California, the jury finds the defendant … not guilty.”  The camera cuts to a shot of Raymond Burr, whose mouth registers a slight smile. The boy on the couch smiles, too. Another injustice righted. “I knew since second …

Making Connections

Jeffrey Beaver has always brought people together; now he’s helping Sound Transit unite the whole region 

Jeffrey Beaver is helping reshape King County— but not through politics. It’s more like a jurisprudential version of Euclidian geometry: finding the shortest legal distance between two points. Beaver is the lead eminent domain trial attorney at Miller Nash Graham & Dunn, which is handling the lion’s share of land acquisition for Sound Transit as its light rail system knits the region together.  That network, scheduled to be completed in 2041, will have 116 miles of track and cost …

Above Reproach

Why James Williams came to mind when the ACLU needed someone to spearhead a major access-to-justice case

One evening in the late fall of 1992, the phone rang at the San Vito dei Normanni Air Station in Brindisi, Italy. Capt. James Williams, on his last military assignment in the Air Force Judge Advocate General’s Corps, picked up. “I was the only person in the base office,” says Williams, who was surprised to hear Marcella Fleming Reed, a friend from law school, on the other end. “We hadn’t talked in four years. She wanted to convince me to interview for work in Seattle.” Williams was …

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