Symmes Law Group, PLLC

Focus and practice areas

Symmes Law Group works on debt. Consumer bankruptcy under Chapter 7 and Chapter 13 sits at the center of the caseload, and the firm handles both chapters. Debt settlement and student loan settlement and rehabilitation sit alongside them.

Foreclosure defense is a second strand. The firm represents homeowners in mediation under the Washington State Foreclosure Fairness Act, a state process with its own timelines and paperwork. Short sale negotiation falls under the same roof.

The rest of the practice covers estate planning, probate, and residential real estate transactions. In my opinion the mix hangs together well. A client facing foreclosure often needs a real estate lawyer and a bankruptcy lawyer in the same conversation, and Symmes Law Group covers both.

Who does the work

Richard J. Symmes founded the firm in 2010 and remains its principal attorney. He is a Seattle-area native. He holds licenses in Washington and Colorado.

His education is a JD from the University of Denver, Sturm College of Law, and a B.A. in Economics and Communications from the University of Washington. Before starting the firm, he practiced at Denver law firms across bankruptcy, real estate, insurance, and litigation. That Colorado stretch lines up closely with what the Seattle office handles today.

The real estate license

Symmes also holds a Washington State Managing Broker real estate license. It's an unusual credential for a bankruptcy attorney and worth flagging for anyone weighing a short sale or a home that might be lost. He knows the transaction side of a property, along with the legal side.

How the firm is set up

The firm states that clients work directly with an attorney, and that a paralegal or case manager does not run the file. For a one-attorney practice this is a claim that the structure itself supports. There is one lawyer, and he is the one on the case.

Billing runs on a flat fee. The firm publishes this as its model across its practice pages. Bankruptcy work suits flat fees reasonably well, since the filings and hearings in a straightforward Chapter 7 follow a known sequence.

Consultations happen by phone, in the office, or over Zoom. The initial consultation carries no charge. Zoom availability matters for a firm serving counties well outside Seattle.

Where the firm practices

The office sits in the South Lake Union neighborhood of Seattle. The firm's stated service area covers King, Snohomish, and Pierce counties, which takes in Seattle, Bellevue's side of the lake, Everett, and Tacoma.

Yakima gets its own location page. That is a long way from South Lake Union, on the other side of the Cascades, and it suggests the firm has built a client base in central Washington. Tacoma and Seattle also have dedicated pages.

Washington bankruptcy filings split between the Western and Eastern districts, and a firm covering both Seattle and Yakima is working across that line. As a reviewer, that is the detail worth noting about the firm's reach.

What a prospective client can verify

The record on the site

The firm's founding year, its founder's law school, his bar licenses in two states, and his broker license are all stated plainly on the about page. Each of those is checkable against public records. Washington and Colorado both publish attorney licensing status, and Washington's Department of Licensing publishes broker records.

The practice area list is specific. Chapter 7 and Chapter 13 are named separately, the Foreclosure Fairness Act is named by statute, and student loan settlement and rehabilitation appear as distinct services. Specificity of that kind is easier to check than a general claim to handle debt matters.

A note on the site's data

One inconsistency turned up during the review. The site's structured data lists a downtown Seattle address on 4th Avenue and a phone number that differ from the contact page's South Lake Union details. This review relies on the contact page, which is the human-facing source. Anyone reaching out should use what the contact page shows.

Who this suits

The clearest fit is a Washington homeowner or consumer carrying debt they cannot service. Someone weighing Chapter 7 against Chapter 13, or facing a foreclosure notice, will find a firm that has handled that specific work since 2010 and that also holds the real estate credential to advise on the property itself.

Estate planning and probate clients are also served, though those areas share the attention of a single attorney with a debt-heavy caseload. A client with a complex estate matter may want to ask about current capacity.

The flat-fee model gives a client cost certainty at the outset, which carries weight for people who are consulting a lawyer precisely because money is tight. Free consultations by Zoom lower the barrier further for clients in Yakima or Tacoma. Symmes Law Group has operated under the same attorney and the same focus for fifteen years.