Blog

Serving Youth: ELM Partners with New Horizons

Ellis, Li & McKinstry is proud to announce the beginning of a year-long partnership with New Horizons, a non-profit organization that serves homeless youth in Seattle and King County. Founded in 1978—a year after ELM began—and located in the same Belltown neighborhood, New Horizons is an ideal partner for ELM in its commitment to serve its […]

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Ron McKinstry

The Seattle legal community and our law firm lost a giant on March 5, 2016. Ron McKinstry, partner at the firm from 1992 until his retirement in 2004, died peacefully at age 89. He was surrounded by family at the time. Before he joined ELM, Ron was a long-time partner at Bogle and Gates, one […]

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Skip Li keynotes 2016 Governor’s Prayer Breakfast

ELM founder Skip Li was the keynote speaker at the 2016 Governor’s Prayer Breakfast, an annual bipartisan gathering of politicians, community leaders, and students. The event dates back to a 1935 gathering of business executives in Seattle that gathered to pray about the issues of the day. In 1941, new Washington Governor Arthur Langley invited […]

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Introducing Bemnet: ELM’s summer intern

For the third summer in a row, we welcome a high school student from the YWCA GirlsFirst program. The mission of YWCA GirlsFirst is “to encourage leadership, instill confidence, develop skills, and provide opportunities to girls of color.” Our past interns have been highly intelligent and driven individuals who became valuable additions to our firm. […]

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Being a Courageous Citizen

Ellis, Li & McKinstry is proud to co-sponsor an important Town Hall event “Being a Courageous Citizen” on July 20 at 6:30 PM. The subject of the evening is Gordon Hirabayashi, who challenged the U.S. government’s race-based evacuation orders as a University of Washington student during World War II and was sentenced to jail. ELM partner […]

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Clergy housing allowance survives another challenge

The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals recently dismissed another constitutional challenge to the clergy housing allowance.  The lawsuit by the Freedom From Religion Foundation argued that the clergy housing allowance violated the First Amendment.  The Court of Appeals held that the FFRF did not have standing because it had not been specifically injured. The housing allowance allows […]

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Lessons learned from the demise of Paseo

Social media lit up today at news that highly-rated Caribbean sandwich shop Paseo had closed.  This comes a few months after several former employees sued Paseo and its president for wrongful termination and unlawful withholding of wages.  The defendants deny much of the allegations.  While ELM does not represent anyone in the lawsuit and has no […]

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Tales from the [Criminal] Trenches

Spanking Public figures involved in physical discipline of their children have recently been in the news.  Jan Olson, our criminal defense attorney, just went to jury trial where the uncontroverted facts were that our client spanked his 7 year old son on the bottom with a belt. Our client was initially investigated for felony assault […]

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