OTLA Trial Lawyer Winter 2021

20 Trial Lawyer • Winter 2021 Kristen West McCall By Kristen West McCall OTLA Guardian I was a young associate in my first year working for Randy Pickett and Bren- dan Dummigan, when Pickett, in a client meeting gave me great praise for a win- ning brief I’d written. I’d written? I looked at him funny. I was pretty sure he’d written it and I’d provided a few novice edits. But this is Pickett for you. He deflects credit and gives it to his col- leagues. For him, it’s not about what he did. It’s about what we did. It is this spirit that shows me — and everyone at our firm— that each person’s input mat- ters, and that representing clients to- gether is how we win better. When I have a hard time recognizing my own value, Pickett does not. He constantly reminds me that other people We Win Better Together The move to Partner — and sometimes it’s me — have better ideas than his. This camaraderie and humble exchange of ideas is the tone of our partnership at PDM, a partnership of people united for the benefit of our clients, one that has grown tremen- dously over the last seventeen years. Pickett and Dummigan joined as partners in 2003, creating Pickett Dum- migan. That partnership married Pick- ett’s brilliant legal mind and Dummigan’s strength in strategy and business savvy. Their partnership soared with the con- stant support of Monica Valenzuela, our long-time senior legal assistant and office manager. Valenzuela is a Jill of so many trades that support the partnership: paralegal, HR specialist, supervisor, bookkeeper, social worker, office mom and team builder. In 2009, they hired me as their only associate. Together, the three of them taught me to do my job and inspired me to do it with precision and passion. Getting started For the next five years, my cup was full doing legal work and client counsel- ing. I poured sweat over seemingly im- possible fact patterns that I watched them turn into winning arguments and well- crafted settlements for our clients. The business of it all — the partnership — didn’t intrigue me that much, probably because I didn’t even think to question whether I would be a partner in the busi- ness. They’d hired me right out of three years as a public defender in Multnomah County. I’d grown up the daughter of school teachers and police officers. I’d never known anything other than public service, so the concept of running a pri- vate business was totally foreign. Partner- ship seemed like something for someone else, someone driven by profit, publicity or fame, and not for me. All I really cared about were my idealistic goals of seeking truth and justice for people less fortunate than I. But in those years, I grew to under- stand how my role in the partnership mattered, and increasingly so. I’d get regular kudos from Pickett — I started to write my own briefs — and I started to see myself as a leader in certain kinds of cases, especially premises liability and nursing home negligence. I was creative and ambitious. And the work I was doing had real and powerful impact. Clients sang my praises. I started to think about how to increase the impact of my work. I didn’t automatically think of becom- ing a partner. Though I did feel some pressure by non-lawyer or big firm stan- dards. People would ask, “When are you going to make partner?” The phrasing of the question itself even irked me. As if, when someone “makes” partner, they have arrived or been anointed with some special power by someone else. No, the