Most defense attorneys learn how the state builds a DUI case by watching it happen to their clients. Chester learned it earlier, and from the other direction.
Early in his career he served as a Thurston County Rule-9 Prosecutor, the supervised practice role Washington allows law students and new lawyers. It is a small credential on paper and a large one in practice: it meant sitting inside a prosecutor's office while cases were charged, watching which files got attention and which got resolved, and seeing what the state does when its evidence is strong and what it does when it is not.
He has spent the nineteen years since on the defense side. That combination is the whole basis of how he works a case. Knowing how the state assembles a DUI — the order the evidence arrives in, which parts of the file are solid and which are assumptions nobody checked — tells you where to look first.
He represents clients across Thurston, Pierce, Mason, Kitsap, Lewis, Grays Harbor, King, Snohomish, Cowlitz and Clark Counties. Thurston is home base, where he has practiced for more than twenty years and where his courthouse relationships run deepest.