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 1986, 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 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. Due to a ballot measure that was approved by Oregon voters in 1994, judges are generally required to impose a minimum sentence in cases where people have been convicted of, or have pleaded guilty to, certain enumerated offenses. These include sexual abuse, rape, unlawful sexual penetration, and sodomy, among others. Because of this, many people are pressured by prosecutors into entering a guilty plea to a non-ballot offense, and Ms. Wright has provided successful defense representation if the client chooses to go to trial to prove their lack of guilt.