My name is Rob Boggs and I am a trial lawyer practicing in Yakima, Washington. Yakima is a town of about 80,000 residents located east of the Cascade Mountains and is famous for its apple orchards and wineries. Over the years my practice has taken me through a wide range of subjects from family and criminal law to commercial litigation and personal injury both for the plaintiff and defense. The constant through those various areas of the law has been trial advocacy.

After 28 years of practicing, I continue to be fascinated with the art and craft of trial advocacy. In the time I have left to practice (many years I hope) I have decided to dedicate myself to mastering this craft. I believe Michael Tigar when he says that trial advocacy is a craft that can be learned as opposed to an art which requires innate talent. I also believe though that there is a bit of art in it at the times when the practitioner can pull something together from his or her imagination that no one may have thought of before.

Therefore, this blog is dedicated to the art and craft of trial advocacy and will contain all things relevant to that subject.  Thrown in from time to time will be comments on legal news, and the occasional opinion just to spice things up a bit. It is my hope that both the reader and I will benefit from this enterprise.

I am a homegrown Midwestern boy of Scotch-Irish descent and grew up in Illinois, Wisconsin and Michigan. I graduated from Michigan State University in 1975 with a B.A. in Economics with high honors. My goal had always been to be a lawyer and to be in the great outdoors and so I migrated to Seattle, Washington (when Starbucks only existed in Seattle) and attended the University of Washington where I received my J.D. in 1978.

After graduating I took a job as a Deputy Prosecutor in Eastern Washington where the sun shines all the time.  I did that from 1978 to 1982. As I look back on that job it was a godsend because I was in trial constantly on both felonies and misdemeanors. It is also where I met my wife of 24 years going on 25. After that job we moved to Yakima, Washington where I have been at the firm of Lyon, Weigand and Gustafson ever since. That was at the time that some trial giants like John Gavin still graced the halls of the county courthouse and I soaked up what I could.

I like lawyers and so I have felt it important to be involved in bar activities. I was fortunate enough to be elected Governor of the 4th District and served on the Board of Governors of the Washington State Bar Association from 2001 to 2004. I continue to serve on the Committee for Media Relations and the Committee for the Lawyers Assistance Program. I am a member of the Washington Trial Lawyers Association and the Association of Trial Lawyers of America. In the past I was also a master member of the John Gavin Inns of Court.

My trial practice has evolved into more complex cases in the personal injury field and commercial litigation. I have been involved in serious injury cases, wrongful death, employment cases and more and more complex commercial litigation.