The Spokane-based law firm of Witherspoon Brajcich McPhee PLLC prides itself on being the small, big firm despite the fact they’re looking to expand.

Though in the midst of the coronavirus outbreak, senior partner Jim McPhee says the firm is busy handling the affairs of their clients who are local employers and government municipalities.

“We’re looking to add staff and expand, but only if the fit is right,” says McPhee. “We are always consistently busy regardless of the highs or lows throughout the greater economy.”

WBM is located in a seventh-floor suite in the Chase Financial Center downtown at 601 W. Main. The firm occupies 8,500 square feet and has the ability to expand at that location.

Peter A. Witherspoon is a firm founder and senior partner. Meanwhile, Gary Brajcich and McPhee also serve as senior partners. They are three of  11 attorneys in the firm, which has a support staff of 11 employees. The firm covers 11 legal areas including business and commercial law, creditor law, estate planning and probate, and health care law.

McPhee, the second-leading scorer in the history of Gonzaga University basketball, says WBM always has desired to be well-rounded in order to meet a wide range of client needs.

Witherspoon started the firm Workland & Witherspoon PLLC in 1985 with former partner James Workland. Brajcich joined the firm in 1992, and McPhee joined in 2001. The firm changed to its current name at the beginning of 2017 when Workland left to start his own firm. 

McPhee says it’s not necessarily the number of people or practice areas, but the “kind of people” that end up getting hired.

“We could add one person, and if it’s not the right person, then you might find yourself having to do things by committee,” McPhee says.

“Conversely, we could add three people, and if they’re the right people, then it doesn’t change this place at all,” he says. “The practice areas that we have just seem to work well with each other.”

McPhee says he joined the firm after having worked at the Spokane-based firm of Crumb & Munding PS, which specializes in labor union law.

“That was a good way to cut my teeth in a lot of different practice areas before coming here,” he says.

McPhee, originally from Tacoma, played basketball at Gonzaga from the 1985-86 season to the 1989-90 campaign and finished just 182 points away from being the school’s all-time scoring leader.

As far as he’s concerned, GU basketball before the 1998-99 Elite Eight-run didn’t exist.

“They’re the dark years that no one talks about,” McPhee says, laughing. He earned his law degree from the Gonzaga University School of Law in 1996.

Attorney Brian Werst came to the firm after K&L Gates LLP, an international law firm based in Pittsburgh, which once had an office here, closed its Spokane site at the end of 2015.

“When it closed up, several of us boxed up our files, came through the skywalk and joined the firm here,” Werst says of himself and some of his former K&L colleagues.

He says WBM’s atmosphere and size suits him well.

Werst earned his bachelor’s degree from Eastern Washington University in 1995 and graduated from GU’s law school in 1998.

“It’s an appropriately sized law firm that can offer a full array of services to clients,” Werst says of WBM. He says there’s “cross-pollination” within the firm as it relates to attorneys assisting each other on client cases.

Werst says he enjoys working locally.

“At K&L, management was dictated by offices on the East Coast and worldwide,” he says. “Here, I’m amongst partners who can get together for a sandwich on a Monday afternoon and make decisions.”

Werst says the firm practices good corporate citizenship.

“We’re here more than we are at home, so that’s really important,” he says.

Jessica Allen joined WBM eight years ago after having worked four years at Spokane-based Paine Hamblen LLC.

She moved to Spokane 15 years ago with her husband, Phil Allen, who is a philosophy professor at Gonzaga.

Allen says WBM has “great people, great attorneys, and excellent staff.”

“That might sound fundamental, but not all places have those qualities,” says Allen, a GU law grad who earned her juris doctorate in 2007.

McPhee, Werst, and Allen say beloved and recently retired attorney Gary Randall had a profound effect on the collegiality that exists at the firm.

“It took me two, maybe three years to stop calling him Professor Randall after I started working here,” Werst says.

Allen says Randall had a “teacher’s heart” and was eager to help mentor young attorneys.

“He made a mark on the legal profession in Spokane,” she says.

“He was my corporate law professor at Gonzaga,” Allen says. “But for him, I would not have the confidence to pursue a Tax LL.M (master of science in taxation). I lucked out getting the chance to work with him in the last years of his career.”