Founder.
When no box fits, one must be built.
We are a different kind of law firm because we are driven by a different kind of leader.
An East Coast firebrand forged from blue-collar grit and polished by white-collar experience. A leader who has assembled a small team of like-minded attorneys with an equal passion for fierce client advocacy. As a firm, we are a calming force in chaos and crisis. We are vigilant fiscal stewards of others’ money. We are aggressive without escalation and reasonable without capitulation. We understand that the biggest battles are often won more swiftly with grace than conflict.
Kris Costello is CLF’s founder and tireless advocate for her client’s in the quest for just results.
An East Coast firebrand forged from blue-collar grit and polished by white-collar experience. A leader who has assembled a small team with an equal passion for fierce client advocacy, excellence, and equity. Kris’ brand is a blend of power and grace. She hopes that everyone, friends, and adversaries, experience her and her team as smart, fair, and decent, the CLF brand. Life, law, and business are hard enough, decency is essential – it is nothing more than recognizing our shared humanity.
As a firm, we are a calming force in chaos and crisis. We are vigilant fiscal stewards of others’ money. We are powerful but do not escalate, we are graceful, but we do not capitulate. The biggest battles are often won more swiftly with grace than conflict.
All good advocates are influenced by their upbringing and lived experience. This experience shapes one’s values and guides one’s life choices. In Kris’s case a family and community background that reads like the original American dream, Kris was raised to live in gratitude for the opportunities she was blessed to receive, to take self-pride in her gifts and talent, being smart, to contribute to a better world and use her power and intellect to help others achieve economic empowerment and make the world a more equitable.
Kris is creative and innovative – she can think “in the box” and “out of the box” and this makes her uniquely qualified for work as a trial attorney and government investigations’ advocate. She takes pride in leading her team and resolving her cases in the most practical, efficient, and strategic way possible. She has pioneered and honed her unique practice and business model through her extensive career in law and business and is energized by any opportunity to share her experience to help clients achieve economic empowerment and help make this world more equitable.
Experience
Kris has tried over fifty cases to the bench and the jury, litigated hundreds of contested evidentiary matters and resolved hundreds of matters through motions practice and alternative dispute resolution. She leverages her 31 years of trial, litigation and government investigation experience and 17 years as a teacher of trial advocacy and 25 years as a founder and business owner for all the firm’s clients.
Education
Kris graduated from Boston College in 1987 with a B.A. in History and received her J.D from Boston University School of Law in 1991. She was admitted to the Washington State Bar in 1991 and worked as a King County Public Defender for seven years. She founded Costello & Associates in 1998 and its successor firm Costello Law Firm in 2009.
Associations and Recognition
Kris is a member of the Federal Bar Association, Western District of Washington. She is ranked in Chambers- need logo and link AV-rated by Martindale-Hubbell, a peer rated Super Lawyer and Best Lawyer.