Every day around 11:30, you will hear Gene Moen jingle the change in his pocket as he walks down the hall. It’s lunch time, and barring trial or deposition, it’s the signal for the three partners to go to lunch. Yes, every day. They discuss cases, of course, and brainstorm, and strategize and pick them apart and put them back together again. But they also talk about personal challenges, family matters, sometimes sports, and always politics. They laugh and tease. Paul Chemnick was once asked by a summer law clerk applicant what he enjoyed most about the practice of law, and answered, “lunch.” This was in part because it seemed to be an obvious canned question to demonstrate interest, but also because it was, in part, truth. These are colleagues who have worked together for 30 years, and lunch has become a signifier of the bonds of respect and appreciation and caring they hold for each other. It’s not your usual law firm.
This is not the usual article either. It’s not one that extols cases won or honors bestowed, although they’ve more than earned their share. It’s an article about a few of the things that made them into who they are, how the firm came about, and why they’ve been together for 30 years.
**PAUL CHEMNICK** grew up poor, raised by a single mother. Although she was unable to work, she tried to make life an adventure for her children. Paul and his mother and sister moved around often, renting tiny places for the school year, and then camping for the summers in state and national parks around the country. Paul quickly learned to fish and the family survived that first summer mainly on the trout he caught, fruit picked from an abandoned orchard, berries, and flour they made into bread wrapped around sticks and cooked over the fire. They did this over the course of six summers and he especially liked the national parks where they could spend evenings at the campfires with the rangers watching educational slideshows. And no matter where they went, Paul was responsible for catching fish for their meals. It is, Paul says, how his continuing love of the outdoors and his appreciation of nature developed.
Paul obtained a paper route, and over the next four years increased his subscribers by 350 percent, partly by developing a good relationship with all kinds of people at both ends of the economic spectrum. He talked easily with them about all sorts of things, including their lives and their problems, and found he was genuinely interested. Perhaps this experience helped him talk down a charging grizzly bear while fishing in British Columbia (…but that’s a story for another time).
His paper route not only gave him a direct income but presented lawn-mowing and yard-work opportunities. All his money, and his sister’s earned babysitting money, went to their mother to subsidize the meager child support on which they were living.
By 16, Paul was working in the circulation department on weekends; then to evenings and weekends at the paper, and full time in the summers. He was an excellent student and when the newspaper granted him a small scholarship, he took out the maximum National Defense Education Act loan and entered George Washington University. He joined the debate team, representing GWU in the Freshman Debate Tournament. They won and Paul received the unexpected gift of another scholarship, this for full tuition for the coming year. He continued to work after classes, sending part of his wages to his mother. He graduated valedictorian of his class.
Between college and law school, Paul worked for the Office of Economic Opportunity, recruiting out-of-school, out-of-work, 16–21-year-olds for the Job Corps Program in rural Arizona.
The Law School at GWU offered a full scholarship. He was on Law Review, served on the editorial board, and graduated with honors. Before graduation, he accepted an offer to join a prestigious firm in Phoenix. But Arizona was arid and hot, and the politics coolly conservative for someone active in the anti-war movement. He asked to postpone his start for one year to take a clerkship at the U.S. Court of Claims across from the White House. He continued with his anti-war volunteering in Washington, D.C., and decided the Northwest was more to his liking.
Paul joined the firm of Halverson, Strong & Moen, which became Halverson, Strong, Moen & Chemnick. When Paul and Gene decided to abandon hourly fees and focus on contingency cases, they formed the firm of Chemnick & Moen and moved to offices in the Pike Place Market, where they stayed for 25 years. Paul says his name was first on the letterhead only because Gene thought that it sounded better than Moen & Chemnick.
**GENE MOEN** lost his father when he was two. His stepfather was disabled, and for 30 years his mother worked as a waitress at JJ Newberry’s. Gene’s family was poverty- stricken as there were five mouths to feed on a dime-store waitress’ salary. From the age of nine through high school, he worked at numerous jobs: cleaning apartment houses, two newspaper routes, selling magazine subscriptions, picking strawberries, delivering groceries, running a hot dog stand, working at knife-grinding shop, washing dishes, serving behind the counter at a soda shop, waiting tables, and what he calls “general hustling for a buck” wherever he could to help with rent and food.
After high school, Gene enlisted in the Air Force. He was sent to language school to study Russian, after which he was assigned to Air Force intelligence in Berlin for three years. He was there in 1961 to see the Berlin Wall go up. While the work itself may have been interesting, the Air Force was not a career he wanted.
When his tour was up, he attended the University of Oregon for three years, earning his tuition as a janitor (the GI bill was not in effect at the time). He was political: President of Young Democrats, Student President of Faculty-Student Committee to End the War in Vietnam, and active in political campaigns and civil rights groups.
He took the LSAT and was accepted by Yale Law School. Along with his legal studies, he continued political and anti-war activities, and after his second year, worked during the summer for the Office of Economic Opportunity (War on Poverty Agency) as an inspector of Head Start programs, investigating civil rights in Alabama, Florida, and South Dakota.
After law school, Gene again worked for the OEO (1968-71), doing legal work on Legal Services, Migrant Worker, and other OEO-funded programs. Interestingly, the OEO Director was Don Rumsfeld and the deputy director was Dick Cheney. Although they were Republicans, he got to know them and liked them both (although he’s changed his mind since).
Gene met his wife-to-be, Peggy, at a party in D.C. They married in 1971 and decided to move to Seattle. Interestingly, Gene never intended to actually practice law, but after moving to Seattle he filed a pro se lawsuit challenging the one-year residency requirement for voting, arguing the case before the Washington Supreme Court. He won, changed the law in Washington State, and was hooked on litigation.
Peggy and Gene adopted four children from different racial backgrounds and later had their youngest, a birth child. Six grandchildren have since joined the family.
**PAT GREENSTREET** was born in Seattle. Unlike her partners, she was adopted, grew up in a middle-class household and benefited from 13 years of parochial education. Her parents’ acrimonious divorce marked the beginning of some challenging years. She started working at 15, cleaning toilets and hairbrushes in a local beauty salon for $5 a week and free haircuts. Soon after, she also began paying for her own parochial high school tuition and it was understood she would need to pay for college, too.
Pat found herself drawn to nursing. She attended Shoreline Community College for her first year as tuition was affordable and she could get the tough chemistry prerequisites met in a small setting. Her grades allowed her to transfer to the University of Washington School of Nursing for her final three years, rotating through most of Seattle’s hospitals for her clinical experience. She then entered the world of pediatrics at Seattle Children’s Hospital. Within six years, Pat was head nurse of two units, and was being encouraged to pursue graduate studies so she could continue to move up the ranks of nursing administration. Nursing administration meant navigating intra-hospital politics full-time. She came to realize the best way to change the system was to become a legal advocate for patients and enrolled at UW School of Law.
Always thinking ahead, in the third week of her first year of law school, Pat began to pore over descriptions of local firms in order to find a summer position as a legal intern. She wanted to work in a small firm with smart, well-regarded lawyers who would be good mentors. Gene and Paul had impressed her as very bright people with delightful senses of humor and great hearts, and there was no question which offer she would accept.
Pat thought at first she wanted to learn family law, as she had experience working with children and families. She was quickly and thoroughly disillusioned during her first experience working on one of Gene’s divorce cases and rapidly concluded family law litigation was too often emotional, illogical, and detrimental to children. Fortunately, Gene and Paul were expanding their contingency fee practice and in 1984, the year Pat became an associate, they jettisoned their hourly cases to specialize in personal injury and medical negligence. She worked on an obstetrical negligence case, which involved a mother’s death during childbirth, and found her professional passion.
The firm became Chemnick | Moen | Greenstreet when Pat made partner in 1985, and as more and more referrals came in for medical cases, the three focused their practice solely on medical negligence.
**THE FIRM.** Gene, Paul and Pat have weathered births, deaths and disability of family members, two divorces, personal illnesses and crises of their children and staff members, and through it all have drawn strength, counsel, and comfort from the unconditional support they give each other. They decided to commemorate their 30th anniversary by traveling to Europe last fall, each choosing one city to visit. They toured Prague, Vienna, and Berlin in 15 action-packed days. Pat was most excited to see Berlin through Gene’s eyes as he hadn’t been back since he served in Air Force intelligence when the Berlin wall was under construction. The entire trip was memorable, but she won’t forget Gene pointing out his room and work location at Tempelhof Airport. “It was like he was twenty again,” she says with a smile.
Pat and Gene and Paul consider the members of their firm not only as part of the team, but as their “work family”. They have talented staff, some of whom have been with them nearly since the beginning. They’ve recently acquired a firm dog, Molly, thanks to valued associate Tyler Goldberg-Hoss (who gained a condo but lost a yard), and she adds to the warm, casual, family-friendly ambiance of the office. Even better, the firm added Gene’s two daughters and Paul’s son, lawyers or soon-to-be lawyers all. A new generation follows in their footsteps.
The cases they take are always challenging. The firm represents an amazing array of individuals from every walk of life — people with catastrophic medical conditions who deserved, but did not receive, reasonable medical care. They are often awed by the courage of their clients.
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Gene jingles the change in his pocket as he walks up the hallway, and Pat and Paul join him at the door. They will discuss potential new clients and the upcoming election, Gene and Paul will laugh and argue about who was poorer growing up, Pat will tease. But mostly, they will discuss their clients’ cases and the opportunity for justice. It’s 11:30. Lunch time. Yes, every day.
*Joi Marschal is a paralegal at Chemnick | Moen | Greenstreet. This article was published in the King County Bar Bulletin, May 2012.*
