Glenn Slate grew up cutting hay by hand and chopping ten cords of wood every winter for his family’s 150-acre farm. Milking a cow with his Father was a daily chore and he can recount many a great story his Father would tell him about the important things in life. He eventually left for college at the University of Massachusetts, where he got his degree in psychology. Glenn was fascinated with how the mind worked. When he graduated, he was employed at a lockdown residential facility for dual diagnosis patients. It was here that he learned to “see behind the curtain” and understand how people made decisions, and what motivated and helped them reach their goals.
In his thirst for more knowledge, he left for graduate school in Georgia, where he obtained his master’s in psychology. Graduate school introduced him to law and psychology, which led him to Lewis and Clark Law School in Portland, Oregon. By the time he passed the bar, he had already worked as a law clerk, defending families who had lost their children to foster care.
Glenn employs the values he was taught growing up; things like speak with integrity, back up your word, treat people with respect, and always take the high road. One of his favorite sayings is that “the best result you can get in family law is to convince the other side it’s not worth the fight. However, if you find yourself in a fair fight, you didn’t prepare well enough.” Ever the white knight, he vigorously exposes and defends against opposing parties who will lie, manipulate or try to take advantage of others. If you want to see him get his dander up, try to use a child as a weapon in negotiations.
Glenn’s career has had two focuses: family law and business law. For ten years, he was General Counsel for one of Oregon’s fastest growing technology and e-commerce companies, when Internet law was still the Wild West. Since then he’s managed his own civil litigation firm in Northeast Washington and Idaho.
