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Wendell L. Belknap
411 5th Street
Oregon City, OR 97045

Tel: 503-657-8946
Fax: 503-655-2775

Email Wendell
wendell@belknaplaw.com

Website:
www.belknaplaw.com

About


About Wendell L. Belknap:

I earned my law degree and graduated cum laude from Northwestern School of Law at Lewis and Clark College (Portland, OR) in 1985. I majored in Political Science and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Oregon (Eugene, OR) in 1982, and graduated from Jesuit High School (Portland, OR) in 1978.

I worked for a mid-size Portland, Oregon, law firm immediately after graduating from law school and passing the bar exam in 1985. Ultimately I opened my own office in Clackamas County, Oregon, on October 1, 1988, where I have been since. My office is located in the historic McLoughlin Neighborhood of old Oregon City in a home built in 1920, which my wife and I remodeled to be accurate to that era. Out of the comfortable setting of that old home I strive to maintain a general practice which meets the diverse needs of my many clients, as I represent a broad clientele in many locations in the State of Oregon.

I have lived all my life in Oregon and am a sixth generation Oregonian whose great-great-great grandfather crossed the plains in a covered wagon in 1848, ultimately settling near Belfountain, Oregon, which was then known as the Belknap Settlement. I take great pride in my old Oregon roots and devote much of my spare time to genealogy work.

I have been married to my wife, Barbara, since 1985. We have two grown children, Jessica and Rebecca. We live on a farm between Wilsonville and Newberg with our menagerie of animals, which consists of horses, cats, and a dog.


Lori L. Hattig: Legal Assistant

Lori is a "home-town girl," having lived most of her life in the Oregon City area. She is a 1984 graduate of Oregon City High School, and has worked for lawyers and law firms in the greater-Portland area since that time. I initially interviewed Lori in 1995 when I was considering hiring a part-time secretary. Recognizing her considerable talent, I offered her a part-time job, even trying to have other attorneys hire her part-time, too, as that was all I had to offer. She turned me down on that offer, as she needed full-time work, and accepted another job in Oregon City.

In the interim, Lori married Jerry Hattig and started a second family. I learned she wanted to re-enter the work force in approximately 2010, and offered her a job-share with my secretary of fifteen years who wanted to scale back her hours, as I now had enough work for a full-time secretary, plus some. To my delight, Lori accepted the job. Lori job-shared with Royce until December, 2015, at which time Royce decided she wanted to retire and snow-bird with her husband, Gary. Lori has worked for me full-time, plus some, since then. I was extraordinarily lucky to fill Royce's big, retiring shoes, with Lori.

Lori brings substantial legal training and experience to the job, which are a nice complement to her abundant natural people skills. Lori is the proud mother of Ben and Tyler, and is married to Jerry Hattig. I am extremely fortunate to have Lori running the "front office." I cannot tell you how many times I have had people talk to me on the phone, or meet me in person, only to have the first words out of their mouths be "that lady out front is very nice." I could not agree more. Lori will make you feel welcome from the moment you call or arrive.


Royce T. Graves: Legal Assistant (Retired)

I hired Royce Graves out of a paper mill in Missoula, Montana as my legal secretary in 1995. I had to grow into having a paper mill secretary as my legal secretary, and she had to learn the language of being a legal secretary. Fortunately, I recognized she had the people skills you could not teach, and I hired her. To my surprise, she accepted. It was a process, to say the least. However, for twenty years we made it work. My clients and I were the beneficiaries of her warm and friendly nature the entire time she worked in my office. Royce retired in December, 2015, wanting to snow-bird with her husband, Gary. While her replacement, Lori, is wonderful, you cannot entirely replace someone you worked with in an enclosed environment every day for twenty years without a sense of loss. I can say with absolute truth that I still get asked by long-time clients, "where is Royce." They miss her. I miss her. But I have it on good authority (Royce, herself), that she is having a good time with Gary and the dogs. She says she misses the other people in the office and the clients, but not enough to give up snow birding!