The People's Lawyer

Stephanie “Stevie” Elaine Riley didn't grow up wanting to be a lawyer. She spent 16 years working real jobs — as a janitor in Vermont, a bicycle taxi driver in New Orleans, and years of labor, retail, and customer service. She knows what it's like to be a regular person caught in a system that doesn't care about regular people.

In her late twenties, hoping to better her circumstances, she began an evening bachelor's program for nontraditional students at Tulane University while continuing to work. It was while studying Southern US history and living in New Orleans, the incarceration capital of the world, that she truly began to grasp the scale of mass incarceration in the United States. Hoping to do something with her growing sense of injustice, she volunteered at the Louisiana Books to Prisoners project, eventually becoming a core member of the organization that helped keep the group running. She also worked as an investigator at the Orleans Public Defenders office helping interview witnesses and piece together cases. Both of these experiences left her feeling powerless against larger forces of the State and sparked the idea that she could effect more change with a law degree.

In 2020 at the beginning of COVID, drawn by the nature and quality of life, she made the move to Oregon and began studying at Lewis & Clark Law. Her passion for public service and social justice continued in law school. She spent a year at the Oregon Justice Resource Center's FA:IR Law Project working to reverse, vacate, and prevent wrongful and unjust convictions and sentences. She moved on to a summer at the PCC CLEAR Clinic helping hundreds of Oregonians expunge their criminal records and apply for SB 819 felony record relief. During a year at Lewis & Clark's Criminal Justice Reform Clinic she worked on a Murder Review Parole Hearing, representing her client at his first chance for freedom in over 25 years. She then spent a semester at the Community Law Division of Metropolitan Public Defenders working on sex offender registry relief and expungements. Through all of these experiences she learned one thing — she loves working with people, helping them navigate a confusing system with ease, helping them tell their story and ultimately helping them get the best result possible.

Since graduating magna cum laude, Stevie has been a public defender at Vancouver Defenders, handling hundreds of misdemeanor cases at every stage — from arraignment through resolution. She's in Clark County District Court every day, arguing motions, negotiating with prosecutors, and trying cases before judges who know her by name.

Her path to the courtroom wasn't traditional. But that's exactly why she's the attorney you want. She understands her clients because she's lived in their world. She fights for her clients. She doesn't back down. And she believes every person — regardless of their circumstances — deserves a fierce, uncompromising defense.