Skookum Law Group

Focus and practice areas

This is a family law practice based in Seattle, Washington. Its work centers on divorce and separation. The site states that focus plainly, and the areas it lists stay close to it.

The core practice areas are divorce, child custody and parenting plans, child support, and spousal support. The firm also drafts prenuptial and postnuptial agreements, and it handles paternity matters. In my opinion, that is a tightly drawn list for a family law office, and a tight list often tells you where the daily work actually sits.

What sits under each area

The site names more than the headline topics. Under separation, it lists legal separation, relocation, and visitation. It points to high-asset divorce and to LGBTQ+ family law as matters the firm takes on.

Divorce itself is described in several forms. The pages name uncontested divorce, collaborative divorce, mediation, and litigation. That range is useful to see, because two people ending a marriage rarely arrive in the same posture, and the path that fits a quiet split is not the path a contested one needs.

How the firm approaches a case

The firm describes a collaborative approach to resolving disputes. It works to negotiate agreements between the parties where that is possible. For contested matters, it turns to the court process.

That mix matters for anyone choosing a family lawyer. Some cases settle across a table. Others need a judge to decide. A firm that names both routes is signalling it will take either, depending on what the situation calls for.

The practice offers an initial consultation that runs from 30 to 60 minutes. It is held over Zoom by default, with an in person option on request. As a reviewer, I read the default-to-video setup as a practical choice for clients across the Seattle area who would rather not travel for a first conversation.

How the team is built

The site names five attorneys: Janel Ostrem, Nathan Cliber, Mark Alexander, Emily Raszler, and Monica Stallings. Five lawyers is a real bench for a firm this narrowly focused. It suggests the office can carry more than one active matter at a time, and that a client is not depending on a single person.

Only one attorney profile carries detail on the pages reviewed here. That is Janel Ostrem. The bios for Nathan Cliber, Mark Alexander, Emily Raszler, and Monica Stallings were not on the pages found, so this review does not speak to their backgrounds. A reader who wants those details would need to ask the firm.

Janel Ostrem

Janel Ostrem earned an undergraduate degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She then took her law degree at the University of Washington. There she served as a Notes and Comments editor for the Washington Law Review, a role that tends to go to strong students.

Her practice began with clients in South King County. She later moved her work to the Seattle area when she joined the firm. She also sits on the Executive Board of King County Collaborative Law. That last point lines up with the collaborative method the firm describes, which is worth noting when a client is weighing how a case might be handled.

Two names on one billing statement

One detail is worth flagging for anyone about to become a client. Billing statements may show either Seattle Divorce Services or Skookum Law Group. The two names refer to the same office.

This is the sort of thing that can confuse a client who spots an unfamiliar name on a statement. The firm states it in the open on its own new-client page, which is the right place for it. In my opinion, putting both names in plain sight is a small but real mark of clear billing practice.

What the public pages show, and what they leave out

The site gives a clear read on scope. You can see the practice areas, the collaborative method, the court option, and the five named attorneys. You can also see that the firm covers the full spread of divorce types, from uncontested filings to litigated cases.

Some things the pages do not state. There is no founding year on the material reviewed here. Four of the five attorney profiles are not published, and law schools and admission dates for those four are not listed. The legal entity suffix for Skookum Law Group is not given either.

Those gaps do not undercut the parts that are present. For a family law office, the record on the site holds together well enough to act on. The focus is stated, and the practice areas match the name over the door. That gives a prospective client a fair basis for a first call, and a short list of questions to bring to it.