Civil Litigation Attorney in Kent, WA

Not every legal fight involves an injury or a family. Sometimes a contractor takes the deposit and never comes back. Sometimes a business partner quietly moves money. Sometimes a neighbor builds a fence eighteen inches onto your lot and refuses to move it.

That is civil litigation, and we have handled it from our Kent office since 1984.

We work the same sequence on nearly every civil matter.

We start with the documents. Contracts, invoices, emails, texts, bank records. Most civil cases are won or lost on what was written down at the time, not on what anyone remembers.

Next we value the dispute honestly. That means the realistic recovery, minus what it will cost to get there, minus the years it may take. We tell clients when a case is not worth suing over. Turning away a fee is cheaper for everyone than a two-year fight over four thousand dollars.

Then we try to resolve it. A firm demand letter from a law office settles a surprising number of disputes, because the other side finally understands the cost of ignoring you.

If that fails, we file. We prepare discovery, take depositions, bring in experts where the subject needs one, and argue motions.

Then we try again to settle, because most civil cases do settle, often at mediation. Going to trial is the option we hold in reserve rather than the goal.

Most of the civil cases that fall apart in our office fail for the same reason. Nobody wrote anything down.

A handshake deal on a remodel. A partner who "agreed" to a split over dinner. A tenant who was "definitely" told about the repair. All of it may be completely true and still be very hard to prove three years later.

So a piece of free advice, whether you hire us or not. Put the terms in writing, even a plain email that says here is what we agreed today. Confirm changes the same way. Save the texts. Photograph the work as it happens.

If the dispute has already started, stop deleting things right now. That includes texts and email threads that make you look bad. Destroying records after a dispute begins causes far worse problems than whatever the records say.

We are a small firm, which is the point. You will speak with the attorney handling your file, not a coordinator.

Jeffrey Floyd has practiced in Kent since November 1984, now alongside his son Evan. Four decades in one community means we know how local disputes tend to resolve and which arguments actually land here.

We also handle personal injury claims, family law, and estate planning, which matters more than it sounds. Civil disputes rarely stay in one lane. A partnership fight can turn into an estate question when a partner dies. A property dispute can surface in a divorce.

One more thing worth saying about small firms and civil work. When a dispute is handled by a large practice, the person who reads your contract in month one is rarely the person who argues your motion in month fourteen, and the handoffs cost you both money and continuity. Our files stay with the attorney who opened them, from the first letter through to whatever ends the case.

That continuity is also why we can tell you honestly, six months in, that the strategy we picked at the start is no longer the right one.