John Gear

About 80% of my practice is helping wronged consumers recover from businesses that have cheated them. The rest is a mix of end-of-life and estate planning for elders, wage and hour claims for employees, and advising or serving nonprofits as outside counsel or in providing nonprofit boards with training to avoid problems. I don’t stray outside those basic areas much — for example, I don’t take personal injury cases, car crashes, or any family or criminal law cases. But if the problem is otherwise within Oregon civil law, I’m happy to be consulted and to help out or provide referrals. At this point in my practice, the bulk of my cases come from referrals, which I greatly value. As an engineer before becoming an attorney, I learned to use a frugal problem-solving approach. In my practice, that means emphasis on solving the client’s problem first, rather than defaulting to a given legal approach. If I can solve a client’s issue with a letter instead of a lawsuit, I’m happy to do that.