The crew at Snow and Snow Attorneys at Law in Astoria.

ASTORIA — The Snow & Snow law firm is based on affection and respect for the people of Clatsop County, with multiple generations of Astoria High School alumni bringing homegrown knowledge to the mission of solving small-town legal issues.

Consisting of husband and wife lawyers Harold “Hal” and Jeanyse Snow, the firm is very much a team effort that makes ample use of professional staff members, including Carole Lyngstad, Rosemary Elfering and Melisa Padgett. Along with predecessor firms, Snow & Snow has occupied the same key corner at 801 Commercial near the Clatsop County Courthouse for decades.

In a book-lined conference room with a magnificent table made from a naturalistic slab of wood salvaged from storage in one of the area’s historic salmon canneries, the Snows and their staff recently reflected on careers in the law and the changes they’ve observed.

This summer marks Hal’s 50th year at 801 Commercial.

“I first started working in this building in 1966 in my first summer of law school. So then I worked here for a couple of summers and was admitted to the bar in ‘68,” he said. He attended the University of Oregon School Law under legendary Dean Orlando John Hollis.

Jeanyse has practiced at the firm since 1970. She, too, started at U of O, but transferred to Willamette University for her second and third years of law school, since Willamette’s class schedule allowed her to commute to Astoria on Fridays to see her young husband.

“Dean Hollis wanted us to have 8 o’clock Saturday morning class,” Hal said. “That’s the kind of guy he was. He thought ball-point pens were instruments of the devil, and so we had to write our exams in a fountain pen, or type. I still have that fountain pen, which I just had refurbished. But that was one of his many quirks.”

The dean would lock out late-arriving students, driving home the point that if you were late to court during your career, it could mean the judge granting a default victory to the other side. “There would sure as hell be a question on the exam about what you missed on that Saturday morning,” Hal said.

Jeanyse said the dean’s hard-ball approach instilled invaluable lifelong lessons.

“Dean Hollis, I believe, did us all a service, because if you withstood one of his 20-minute periods, really no judge could scare you more. You knew you could maintain your cool and continue on,” she said.

She recalled a time in his class when she was called upon to discuss Article 4 of the Constitution.

“So he was asking me questions and I was answering. He said, Mrs. Snow, can you tell me thus-and-so, and I said no, and he said why not? I said, well, the sentence is ambiguous. And he said well, read it, Mrs. Snow. And so I read it. He said read it again, Mrs. Snow, and I read it again. He started coming down off the podium and he got over me and said, read it again, Mrs. Snow, and I read it again. And he said, ‘Give me that paper!’”

Because the law school’s copies of state statutes were being updated on the day she went to get a copy of the Constitution, Jeanyse had obtained her version from the Oregon Blue Book, a sort of compilation of state laws and facts. And in Article 4, the Blue Book had mistakenly substituted the word “of” for the word “or.”

With that change, Jeanyse was able to answer the dean’s question, but “It was rather frightening,” she recalled. “He said, ‘I will inform the Oregon Blue Book this afternoon.’”

“That preparation served us well. Read every word, Don’t skip them,” Hal said.

The Snows and their assistants emphasize handling estates, wills, senior law, trusts, real estate and land-use planning. They represent the city of Warrenton. They don’t handle criminal cases or “domestic law,” which consists of matters like divorces. Like other law firms in the county, they see a division between lawyers who concentrate on serving clients in the office versus handling litigation in the courtroom.

“It’s real hard to do any litigation or court practice and be available on the phone to your clients … Courthouse practice is pretty difficult to maintain with an office practice, so we mostly don’t do litigation,” Hal said.

However, like many of the county’s long-term law firms, in the past the Snows occasionally handled criminal cases that were assigned to them by judges. She recalls one notable case when a bust of up to 20 marijuana users was thrown out of court when the star witness turned out to have been hospitalized at times when he claimed to have observed drug transactions.

“I was really happy it turned out that way, since my client wanted to go into court and argue that marijuana was great,” she said, noting that at the time such a suggestion wouldn’t have met with judicial favor.

Also like other local firms, the Snows sometimes call on other attorneys for assistance in specialized areas of the law. These interactions have been overwhelmingly positive, but Hal vividly remembers one encounter with an out-of-town lawyer.

“I’ve found over the years there is less collegiality among some of the younger members of the bar that aren’t local. Locally, we get along fine. I always remember years ago, I had a client who was a fishermen and we were going to see an admiralty specialist at a large Portland law firm and in the elevator was the lawyer we were supposed to see, but she didn’t know us. And she was telling her compadre that she was going to meet these folks from Astoria who’s a fisherman and ‘I hope he’s got a lot of money.’ So I’ve kind of never forgotten that.”

The Snows take pride in being on the side of local residents.

“That’s the great pleasure of it,” Hal said. “It’s about people and helping people. We [lawyers] get a bad rap for all kinds of things but there is a real ability to help people when they need help, and make a difference.”

Such feelings are natural considering the Snows’ depth of connection to the area. Both are Astoria High School alumni from old local families. Hal’s father was born in Astoria in 1908 and his mother arrived in about 1915. Jeanyse’s family has lived here since about the 1890s. Of their key helpers, 43-year employee Lyngstad and 21-year employee Padgett are both AHS alumni. Elfering has been with them 31 years.

The Snows speak of their entire staff in the warmest terms, attributing much of the firm’s success to their work.

“They asked me to come for a month. … I found it very interesting and it’s been a great 43 years,” Lyngstad said. She and Jeanyse were in the same high school class.

“I worked at Bumblebee in the offices when they were here and so there some connection since this firm represented Bumblebee locally,” Lyngstad said. The firm continues to work for surviving Bumblebee fishermen who acquired the Clifton cannery when the company relocated most of its operations out of state in the 1960s.

Elfering, who still has a charming English accent, recalls how her native ancestry might have contributed her joining the firm.

After moving to Astoria with her husband in 1997, “I went around to all the different law firms and was looking for a part-time job and I happened to come in here when Bob MacDonald was the senior partner. He happened to be at the front desk and he was a great Anglophile and so he took my resume from me and said, ‘Well, unfortunately, I don’t think we have any openings right now.’ … The next day, I got a call, and he said, ‘I think perhaps we might have an opening, so would you mind coming in and giving us a sample of your work.’ So I came in and got hired.”

Padgett, who does much of the firm’s behind-the-scenes work on estates, trusts and limited liability corporations, moved to Texas after high school but joined the firm when she returned to Astoria, initially working for then-head partner Jerry McAllister.

The firm has been called Snow & Snow since McAllister’s death in 1997.

The Snows have observed enormous changes in the legal profession in their nearly 50 years of practicing law, going from the era of carbon paper in manual typewriters to the situation today when court papers are filed electronically into a central state database.

The changing role of women in the profession has been especially dramatic, Jeanyse noted.

“When I went to law school, there were very few women. In my class, there were three women and that was a very big number, and now over half the law school classes are women. That is quite the change. Society has moved ahead quickly in that area,” she said.

Looking back at that first scary year in law school at U of O, she reflected, “There was no women’s bathroom. There was one woman in each of the classes ahead of me, so since there were five women who started in my class, Dean Hollis determined the second-floor bathroom would become the ladies bathroom. And the men were quite upset! Until then, those ladies had to leave the building and go to another building.”

The Snows love what they’re doing and have no plans to retire.

Hal: “We’ve given it some thought, but there’s nothing specific to talk about at the moment.”

Jeanyse: “So far, our ‘exit plan’ is pine box.”

Hal: “We’re still having fun. We get a lot of satisfaction out of it. I’d rather do this than play golf. It’s a privilege, really, as far as I’m concerned to be able to be here.”

Jeanyse: “We have tried a few times to have someone younger come in and it’s just never jelled. People don’t want to be in a small community or their wife doesn’t want to be in a small community or they want to make more money. You don’t get rich practicing law in Astoria. But we thought this was a good place to raise kids, which it is.”

The couple have two boys. The younger one is an attorney and married an attorney; they work for separate private law firms in Salem. Their older son lives in Portland and is a real estate appraiser.

“I can’t think of anything I’d go back and change,” Jeanyse said.

“I think we’ve been very lucky to be here in this community and be a part of the community and help people that we’ve known for a long time,” Hal said.