Who you would work with
Four people, and you get to know all of them
Small on purpose. One named attorney owns your matter from the first call to the closing letter, and you will know which one before you sign anything.
Founding attorney
Renata Oyelaran
Renata started Harbor in 2013 after eleven years at a large Portland litigation firm, where she noticed that the clients who did best were not the ones with the most aggressive lawyer. They were the ones who understood what was happening to them.
She handles the practice's contested divorce and custody work, and she is the person you want in a courtroom when a case genuinely has to be tried. She is also the person most likely to tell you not to file something.
- Contested divorce
- Custody and relocation
- Complex property division
Grew up in Beaverton. Runs the Wildwood Trail badly every Sunday.
Attorney
Desmond Okafor
Desmond came to family law from six years in juvenile dependency work, which means he has sat in more rooms with frightened children than the rest of us combined. It shows in how he builds a parenting plan.
He leads the adoption practice and handles most of the firm's mediation and collaborative divorce work. Clients tend to describe their first meeting with him as the first time in months that they were not being rushed.
- Adoption
- Collaborative divorce
- Parenting plans
Plays upright bass in a bar band that is worse than he claims.
Attorney
Mei Tanaka-Brandt
Mei runs the estate planning and guardianship side of the practice. She spent four years as a probate clerk before law school, which gave her an unusually concrete sense of exactly how a plan falls apart after somebody dies.
She is the reason our estate plans get funded rather than filed. If you have a trust that has never had a deed put into it, she will find it in about nine minutes.
- Wills and trusts
- Guardianship and conservatorship
- Probate administration
Keeps a startling number of houseplants alive in a north-facing apartment.
Client care manager
Aaron Fielding
Aaron is almost always the first person you speak to and the person who answers the small questions between meetings. He is not a lawyer and will tell you so before you finish the sentence, but he knows where every document in your file is.
He also runs the consultation calendar, which means he is the one who will find you a Thursday evening slot when your week has no room in it.
- First calls
- Scheduling
- Documents and deadlines
Makes the coffee. Takes it seriously. Bring a mug back.
How we work together
Every open file is discussed by all four of us on a Monday morning. That is not a formality; it is why the advice you get from one attorney is the advice you would get from any of us, and why Aaron can answer a question about your case without going to find somebody.
It also means we take a deliberately limited number of matters. When we are full we say so and refer you on, rather than taking a retainer and getting to you in six weeks.
Ask for whichever of us fits
Tell Aaron what the matter is and he will put you with the right one of the three. If you already know who you want, just say the name.