Valerie Wright

Valerie Wright is a partner at Wright Van Handel LLP. Her firm is located in Bend, Oregon, and she focuses her practice exclusively on criminal defense, representing clients throughout Deschutes County and other parts of the state. She has been in private practice since 1994, and she has been admitted to practice before all Oregon state courts since 1986.

Ms. Wright majored in political science and philosophy at Harvard University, earning her Bachelor of Arts in 1979. She subsequently decided to pursue a legal education and enrolled at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law. After graduating with her Juris Doctor in 1982, Ms. Wright was a deputy public defender with Metropolitan Public Defender in Portland, Oregon, for two years, and she then crossed the aisle and joined the Lincoln County District Attorney’s Office, where she served as the chief deputy district attorney. She and her husband moved to Central Oregon and joined the Deschutes County District Attorney's Office in 1992 where she worked until she entered the private practice.

Although Ms. Wright has extensive experience in helping people defend against a wide variety of misdemeanor and felony offenses, she places a particular emphasis on assisting clients who have been accused by the state of having committed sex crimes. Sex crime allegations are often based on nothing more than one person's word (the person that the State likes to call "the victim.") Due to a ballot measure that was approved by Oregon voters in 1994, judges are generally required to impose a minimum prison sentence in cases where people have been convicted of, or have pled guilty to, certain enumerated offenses. These include sexual abuse, rape, unlawful sexual penetration, and sodomy, among others. Because of this, many people, even innocent ones, feel pressured into entering a guilty plea to a non-Ballot Measure 11 offense in order to avoid the risk of losing at trial and receiving a mandatory prison sentence. Ms. Wright has a goal for each client to be able to make the best decision possible for themselves! That is optimally done by having an attorney who has the capacity to both negotiate a case well but also to try the case beautifully before a jury. She thoroughly prepares for and is usually successful with both options. While not every client can handle the stress and risk of a trial, the best outcome usually goes to those who have all of their options available - and that only occurs when a person is represented by an attorney who has the skill and willingness to try the case. Ms. Wright is that kind of lawyer.