Meet Jennifer
My name is Jennifer Lamari, and I'm a candidate for Lakewood City Council Position No. 3 in 2025. I'm an attorney with my own solo practice, Jennifer Lamari Attorney at Law, in Lakewood, Washington.
Growing up in Western Washington, I was fortunate to be able to enjoy the bountiful natural resources our beautiful state has to offer, such as camping, salmon and steelhead fishing, clam digging, collecting oysters, shrimping, and crabbing. Most of my free time as a child was spent reading fiction and practicing the violin. I regularly competed in orchestra competitions and received awards for Best Solo, Best Duo, Best Trio, and Best Ensemble, and I also played violin with the Southwest Washington Youth Symphony.
I attended Kelso High School and was active in theater and yearbook. During high school I participated in school, college, and community theater as an actor, director, and stagehand. In my senior year of high school I directed a play for the Southwest Washington One-Act Play Festival. I received the award for best director, my show took first place, and many of my cast members also received awards. In 1995, I graduated in the top of my class and lettered in Dramatic Arts.
After high school, I attended Lower Columbia College where I focused mainly on English and Theater. I also played violin for a quarter with the Southwest Washington Adult Symphony and graduated Phi Theta Kappa in 1997. Subsequently, I received a scholarship to attend Hawai'i Pacific University. During university, I served as writer and editor for the Hawai'i Pacific Literary Review. In addition to the standard British and American Literature curriculum at most mainland universities, I also studied Asian Literature and History, African Literature, and Pacific Islander Literature, including Hawaiian, Māori, and many other indigenous authors.
I have always been fascinated with different languages and cultures from a young age. I vividly remember the first "real" book I ever read. At the time, I was around seven or eight years old, and my class was in the library to select reading books. I recall the other children looking at books like Curious George and Clifford the Big Red Dog. For some reason, I turned my head toward the reference section of the library and walked completely across to the other side of the library. My eyes went directly to a plain brown book that just said "Native Americans" on the binding. The non-fiction book was around 200 pages long and only contained a handful of small illustrations. I checked the book out and read it cover to cover. Not only did I fall in love with reading, but I had discovered an invaluable tool to educate myself about the world.
My high school offered Russian, which was not that common. I was fascinated with the idea of learning to read the Cyrillic alphabet and decided to study Russian as my foreign language. I've always had a bit of a knack for picking up the basics of different languages. In college I studied Hawaiian and also Mandarin Chinese. Studying at Hawai'i Pacific University was a unique experience. My graduating class had students from over 100 different countries! I made friends from all over the world.
A friend of mine from Taiwan suggested that I teach in Taiwan after graduation. Since I had studied Chinese, that seemed like a good option. However, once I became serious about the idea of teaching abroad, I learned about available positions in South Korea. At that time, most Korean schools were offering assistance with work visas, flight, and housing, while the jobs in Taiwan were going to require that I figure all of that out on my own.
After graduating Magna Cume Laude from Hawai'i Pacific University in 2000 with a Bachelor of Arts in Literature, I accepted a position teaching English in South Korea. I lived and worked mostly in Gangnam-gu in Seoul, but I also worked for a time in a small village called Jinga-ri in Gyeonggi Province. I fell in love with Korean food, culture, and language, and lived in Korea for two years.
I came back to the States for a short time but decided to go abroad again. I took a job teaching in Poland for a bit and then moved to France. In Paris I taught elementary school at a trilingual school with a French/English/Russian curriculum. Upon returning to the States, I wanted to go to graduate school. I had always planned on continuing my education, but I wasn't sure in which direction I wanted to go.
I decided to ask myself, "What did you want to be when you were a little girl?" The answer was - a lawyer. I remember staying home from school when I was sick and watching People's Court and Perry Mason. As a kid, one of my favorite shows was Night Court. Then came Punky Brewster. Punky was a young girl that was abandoned by her mother and taken in by an older man named Henry. I remember Punky and Henry had to go to court in front of a judge so Henry could ask to be Punky's foster father. I remember seeing the judge on the bench in the courtroom and something in me woke up.
I was eight years old, and I asked my mom to take me to the public library. I went straight to the card catalog to search for law books. I found where they were and began pulling down these huge legal tomes that were so heavy I could barely carry them. I tried to read some of the books, which were obviously WAY over my head! I decided then and there that being a lawyer was too difficult, and I also believed you had to be wealthy or a genius to go to law school. I put it out of my mind and never thought much about it for the next 25 years or so.
Once I remembered this childhood dream, I made it happen. Within six months I had moved to Spokane and was studying at Gonzaga University School of Law. Although it was a lot of hard work, I absolutely loved law school. During law school I received an award for receiving the highest marks in Federal Indian Law and was an active member of the Native American Law Students Association (NALSA). I was selected to participate in the NALSA National Moot Court Competition. We wrote briefs for the competition and also flew to Oklahoma for the oral advocacy portion of the competition where our team received high marks. This earned me a place on the Moot Court Honor’s Council.
During law school I also served on the Student Bar Association Diversity Committee and received a scholarship for promoting diversity. I worked on multiple events and projects to increase awareness and promote diversity within the law school and local community. One event that I spearheaded and worked on for nearly a year focused on recruiting Native American undergraduate students to consider law school and encourage more law students to study Federal Indian Law and Tribal Law.
For the event, we brought together Indian law practitioners, Indian law teachers and students, Indian law clinic teachers and students, tribal attorneys, and tribal judges for a panel discussion with students from the law school, surrounding colleges and universities, and the community.
Additionally, I have been active in the LGBT+ community for 30 years. During law school I was a member of the Gender and Sexuality Alliance, and I have attended multiple Lavender Law Conferences around the country organized by the National LGBT Bar Association.
As a Rule 9 Student Attorney, I interned for the Gonzaga University Legal Assistance Environmental Law and Land Use Clinic and the Spokane Riverkeeper. I also served as a judicial clerk for the Washington State Office of Administrative Hearings in Spokane Valley. I graduated Cum Laude in 2014 from Gonzaga Law with a Juris Doctor.
After law school I worked as an indigent criminal defense attorney in Okanogan County before deciding to move back to this side of the mountains to be closer to family. I worked as Deputy Prosecutor for Pacific County, where I also served as Deputy Coroner. Subsequently, I took a position as Civil Deputy Prosecutor for Cowlitz County in the Child Support Division to be closer to my mother who had recently recovered from ovarian cancer. While there, I was also appointed Special Assistant Attorney General to represent the State in Child Support actions in Wahkiakum County.
During the pandemic, my mother was diagnosed with cancer again, only this time it was leukemia. The pandemic made things especially challenging, but it also allowed me and my siblings to be there for our mother in ways that would not have been possible if we had not been teleworking and in lock-down. Our circle was small, as we didn't want to expose her to anything that might interfere with her treatment or cause an illness that she might not be strong enough to recover from. This odd time when we were all so isolated turned out to be a blessing in disguise that allowed me to spend quality time with my mother, my best friend, to help care for her, to just enjoy each other's company, take her to treatment appointments, and to stay with her at the hospital often for ten or more hours a day.
My mother passed away in 2021, and this marked a massive shift in my life. After my mother passed away, I took a position as Assistant City Attorney for the City of Tacoma Prosecution Division and relocated to Pierce County. I had hoped that this position would be something I would enjoy and do for a long time. However, it wasn't the right fit for me. I was confronted with an ethical dilemma. A situation arose in which I was being instructed to sign off on documents that I did not approve of, that I felt did not comply with court rules, and that I did not believe were best practice. I did my best to navigate the "politics" of the situation in order to remedy the situation, but I was continually met with resistance that bordered on bullying. I had to make the decision that I could not work in an environment where I was being pressured to do something I considered bad practice.
When I first became an attorney, I swore an oath to the U.S. Constitution and the Washington State Constitution. On May 1, 2025, I retook my attorney oath in front of the Washington State Supreme Court along with more than 1300 other attorneys around Washington State. I will not let someone with more power or authority force me to do anything that I know to be in violation of the oath that I swore to the rule of law.
After serving as a child support prosecutor for several years, I had acquired an extensive knowledge of child support law and decided to take a position as a family law attorney. It was a wonderful learning experience in which I was able to utilize the knowledge I had gained from all my time in family court as a child support prosecutor. I gained extensive experience in all aspects of family law in Pierce County. However, I soon became disenchanted with the billable hours and the billing itself. It seemed as though clients were paying a fortune and not getting proportional results. I was sickened to see people spending tens of thousands of dollars with no resolution to their family law case.
I decided to start my own practice based on sliding-scale fees with the goal to provide affordable legal services for a flat fee with payment options. I also provide pro-bono services for indigent defendants when I can. I believe that everyone should be able to get help to navigate the legal system, and that they should not have to go broke, empty their savings, or take out massive loans to pay for an attorney. I provided over 50 hours of pro bono legal services in 2024, which qualifies me for the 2025 WSBA Pro Bono Publico Honor Roll. In 2024 I also contracted with the City of Olympia to provide Public Defense for indigent defendants facing criminal charges. Currently I maintain a part-time contract with the City of Olympia for indigent defense.
In addition to running my law practice, I am the owner and founder of Scales of Justice. Scales of Justice is a labor of love. My goal through Scales of Justice is to raise awareness and debunk some of the misinformation about non-venomous docile snakes through direct experience in the community, such as junior snake handling, snake husbandry education, snake morph genetics education and identification, and community events.