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Josephine County, like most medium and large sized cities and counties, employs a Legal Counsel. The Legal Counsel is the attorney for the County, and does not represent individual clients.* Josephine County is the only county in Oregon with an elected Legal Counsel.
Wally Hicks is your County Legal Counsel. After being elected, he was sworn into office on January 5, 2015.
The mission of the Josephine County Legal Counsel is to provide representation and legal guidance to the County regarding matters that pertain to the community as a whole. The general goals of the office include:
Protect the County from liability.
Effectively and efficiently handle routine legal matters (public contracts, leases, lawsuits, questions, research, etc) for County government.
Provide as many viable legal options to decision-makers as possible. The legal Counsel does not decide policy, but instead helps achieve the goals of policy makers and the electorate as a whole.
Provide guidance that conforms at all times to the letter and spirit of the law.
Appropriately prioritize the work to satisfy realistic deadlines.
Be available, approachable, and accurate. We do not promise to achieve perfection, but we pledge to pursue it.
Administer an effective law library for the benefit of the citizens and the local legal community.
Administer the County’s property agreements.
The office of the Legal Counsel works very hard to achieve these goals. Besides the Legal Counsel, the office includes one other practicing attorney, a Legal Administrator who also does paralegal work, a Legal Secretary, the County Property Manager, and the County Law Librarian.
