Joint Base Lewis-McChord covers 414,000 acres south of Tacoma, between Puget Sound and the Cascade Range. The installation combines what were formerly Fort Lewis and McChord Air Force Base. It’s the largest military base on the West Coast and serves as the power-projection platform for I Corps, the Army’s primary deployable headquarters for the Pacific theater.
JBLM is home to the 2nd Infantry Division and the 7th Infantry Division, both mechanized formations designed for rapid deployment and sustained ground combat. The 1st Special Forces Group (Airborne) operates out of JBLM with focus on the Pacific and Asia. The 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Night Stalkers) conducts rotary-wing special operations training and missions from here. Joint Base McChord handles airlift and mobility operations supporting deployments across the Pacific.
Tacoma borders the installation to the north. The city has roughly 220,000 people and sits on Commencement Bay. Seattle is 40 miles north via I-5. Olympia, the state capital, is 30 miles southwest. Most soldiers fly into Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. The region is defined by water: Puget Sound, the Pacific coast an hour west, and rivers cutting through the Cascades to the east.
The terrain is wet. Rain dominates fall, winter, and spring. Summers are dry but brief. Elevation ranges from sea level at the Sound to low hills inland. Training areas extend south into forested land used for maneuver exercises, live-fire ranges, and air assault operations.
Recent cases involving JBLM soldiers include espionage (attempting to sell military secrets to China), group sexual assault of an ROTC student, murder (pregnant wife and another soldier killed, Army veteran murdered by two soldiers, taxi driver killed by deserter fleeing rape conviction), serial child sexual abuse (former soldier sentenced to 30 years for abusing children on multiple bases including JBLM, another former soldier who abused multiple children over years including locking a 5-year-old in a closet on base), theft of government property and bribery, and high-speed chase ending in arrest for double homicide. This activity at JBLM reflects what we’ve seen across Army installations during two decades of civilian military defense work: sexual assault, child exploitation, domestic violence resulting in death, espionage, and violent crime committed by soldiers against other soldiers and civilians. The pattern isn’t isolated to one post. It’s service-wide. OSTC wasn’t created only to address low conviction rates in Article 120 cases. It exists because the Army faces sustained criminal conduct at every major installation, requiring prosecutors with independence from command influence and institutional focus on serious felonies.
That’s where we step in.
More Than 20 Years of Our Work at JBLM
We’ve defended soldiers at Joint Base Lewis-McChord for more than twenty years. We’ve also handled cases at Naval Base Kitsap in Bremerton and other installations across Washington State during that time. Beyond the Pacific Northwest, we’ve defended soldiers at Army posts across the country, which gives us institutional knowledge of how commands respond to serious allegations, how OSTC prosecutes different offense types, and what leverage points exist during investigation and pretrial stages.
When we travel to JBLM for cases, we establish operations in Seattle, Tacoma, or Olympia depending on case needs and client proximity. The region is familiar territory. We know the Aroma of Tacoma, the route from SeaTac to the installation, the bar scenes where trouble starts, and the local resources soldiers and their families rely on during investigations and trials. It’s become a second home over two decades of work in the area.
Defending Soldiers Since the GWOT
We served as Air Force JAGs from 2001 to 2005, entering shortly after September 11. After leaving active duty and starting this practice, our caseload filled with soldiers facing AWOL charges, desertion allegations, post-deployment criminal cases, and misconduct tied to downrange incidents. That work taught us how to defend under wartime conditions without pretending combat excuses everything.
Many of our early clients were soldiers sent home from combat zones under investigation, or prosecuted after returning from deployment for conduct tied to exhaustion, untreated psychological injuries, or repeated deployments with insufficient recovery time between rotations.
Commands ignored the heroics performed by these soldiers downrange. We had to be the ones telling panels that our clients pulled wounded soldiers from burning vehicles, dragged bodies out of firefights, or held security alone while their squad evacuated casualties. The Army didn’t mention any of that at trial. Once soldiers became inconvenient, once they required patience, treatment, or due process, commands rushed to judgment and discarded their combat records.
Worse, commands weaponized those records. The same heroism that earned medals became prosecution evidence. If a soldier performed under fire, commands argued he must have had full control and awareness during whatever happened after he got home. Valor became proof of discipline. Discipline became proof of criminal intent.
The rank and file hated this. Soldiers, NCOs, junior officers: they saw what was happening and despised it. Those are the people we communicated with during investigation and trial: witnesses who knew the truth, panel members who served in the same conditions, senior NCOs who remembered what deployment actually cost. But reaching them required fighting through commands and prosecutors who didn’t want to be bothered with context or fairness.
It was a long road to make panels see what commands refused to acknowledge. It shouldn’t have been. Even a modest grasp of psychology and the history of warfare will tell you things won’t be any different the next time around.
Many, if not most, civilian attorneys weren’t doing this work during the wars, and current TDS counsel (as of late 2025) entered service long after the wars ended. When the next large-scale conflict breaks out, the military justice system will need defense counsel who understand how war reshapes investigations, recalibrates command priorities, and transforms survival instincts or heroic acts into prosecutable offenses years later.
Crash Course: Articles 117a, 120b, 120c, and 134 (Video Crimes and Child Sexual Offenses)
- Article 134 – CSAM offenses: Possession, receiving, or viewing child sexual abuse material. Possession with intent to distribute. Distribution. Production. Charges escalate based on conduct and volume. Each file can be charged separately.
- Article 134 – Solicitation and enticement: Solicitation is asking someone (including undercover agents) to commit a sexual offense. Enticement is attempting to lure someone you believe is a minor to meet for sexual purposes. Both crimes complete when the communication is sent with wrongful intent. The fact that the “minor” was actually law enforcement doesn’t matter. Impossibility isn’t a defense.
- Article 117a – Wrongful distribution of intimate images: Sharing or posting intimate photos or videos without the subject’s consent, even when the original recording was consensual. The crime is the distribution, not the creation. Consent to record doesn’t equal consent to share.
- Article 120c – Voyeurism and indecent exposure: Secret recording, peeping, or indecent exposure. Includes sending unsolicited explicit photos, which is prosecuted as digital indecent exposure. The conduct targets privacy or involves unwanted sexual display.
- Article 120b – Sexual abuse of a child: Sexual contact with anyone below the age of consent. Consent is not a defense. The law treats minors as legally incapable of consenting. In rare cases involving older minors, mistake of fact may apply if the accused reasonably believed the person was of legal age based on appearance, statements, or setting. Most prosecutions focus on whether the conduct occurred, not whether consent existed.
- Additional Warning: When horseplay becomes a sex offense: Article 120 includes a provision that makes any unwanted contact with another person’s private area a sexual assault if done with intent to humiliate, degrade, or arouse. This turns barracks pranks into registerable sex crimes. Groin strikes, wedgies, pants-pulling, or hazing rituals involving contact with private areas can be charged as sexual assault even when everyone involved considers it a joke. The prosecution doesn’t need to prove sexual motive. Intent to humiliate is enough. A three-second prank becomes a conviction that requires lifetime sex offender registration. “We were just messing around” isn’t a defense.
They’re all SOR:
All of these offenses carry sex offender registration, career termination, and consequences that outlast military punishment. Most convictions result in lengthy confinement, dishonorable or bad-conduct discharge, loss of benefits, and lifetime restrictions on residence, employment, and community involvement.
Civilian Military Lawyers and How They Get Your Money
Q: What’s your retainer?
Unlike other firms, we post our fees on the internet, but we don’t use the term “retainer.” That word implies a deposit that gets billed against until it’s gone, then needs refilling. Most firms in our line of work, and in criminal defense generally, use a flat-fee model instead of hourly billing.
Usually, a “retainer” works like this: the initial payment is held in an account and the attorney counts hours, at a certain rate of dollars per hour (or fraction of an hour), and then applies those hours against the money held in the account. When the money runs out, the client gets another invoice, and the process repeats until funds dry up or the case ends.
We use “initial fee” or “investigative fee” because it covers the entire first phase of representation with no hourly billing, no exceptions, no accounting, no to-and-fro with the bank, and no surprises. It includes all attorney discussions, all contact with trial counsel and OSTC, all communication with investigators and witnesses, all research and writing, and complete analysis of any report of investigation the government produces.
Some cases end during this phase with administrative action: counseling statement, reprimand, or Article 15. If that happens, we prepare the response as part of the same fee. The initial fee isn’t a down payment. It’s payment in full for everything that happens before charges are preferred.
Q: What happens when an hours-based retainer runs out?
Work ceases when payment stops. Attorneys either withdraw from representation or continue with minimal effort until the case concludes. Both outcomes harm the client.
Clients unable to maintain hourly payments don’t replace their attorney, since they don’t have money. They revert to appointed military counsel. If a JAG is already assigned, that attorney assumes full responsibility, frequently a junior captain still developing trial skills. If no appointed counsel has been detailed yet (standard during Army investigations), the soldier has no representation. No attorney responding to questions, no one countering investigative pressure, no one protecting rights.
Flat fees prevent this collapse. Each phase requires full payment before work commences. Clients know the total cost upfront. We know we can complete representation without interruption. Financial uncertainty doesn’t hover over the case. Flat fees safeguard the client and the quality of the work.
Q: Does UCMJ Lawyers offer payment plans?
No. Flat fees function only when paid entirely before representation begins. Partial payment followed by default creates untenable dynamics. We cannot abandon the case without causing harm, and we refuse to provide diminished effort while awaiting payment. This generates problems for everyone: discomfort, uncertainty about commitment, questions whether the firm still has full loyalty.
Also, sometimes decisive work occurs in the opening hours, days, or weeks: intervention that derails in investigation or court-martial, advice that stops a client from ruining his case. Expecting us to provide that level of service and then wait for deferred payment isn’t workable. Up-front payment clarifies all expectations, removes financial anxiety from the relationship, and guarantees the defense Is free from any questions about commitment.
Q: Why are other firms afraid of sharing the prices?
Posting fees publicly means losing the ability to control how the conversation unfolds. If you’re a soldier looking for an attorney online and see the number before calling, you might comparison shop or decide it’s beyond your budget. Firms want you emotionally hooked before the subject of money comes up.
What’s happening during that initial, “free” call?
They’re collecting data. Your rank tells them base pay. Years in service shows proximity to retirement. Dependents increase housing allowance, which inflates the effective amount of your income, and what you stand to lose.
They’re measuring financial pressure and calculating how much fear translates into urgency. The legal consultation is genuine, but the sales assessment runs simultaneously.
Pricing gets delayed deliberately. Once rapport exists and you believe they understand your situation, they start the calculation:
They total what you stand to lose. Base pay, housing allowance, medical and dental coverage for your family, tax advantages, SGLI benefits, professional military education value. They add commissary savings, clothing allowance, even shoppette access. If you have 12 years in, they multiply by the 8 years remaining, plus estimated pay raises for cost of living and increase in rank, and then they tack on a projected retirement value. By the time they’re done, you’re looking at a loss well north of a million dollars.
Framed that way, hiring them isn’t spending. It’s protecting assets. The emotional logic makes the fee appear small relative to potential loss.
This tactic mirrors retail psychology. It’s taught in legal marketing courses. It succeeds because the fear is authentic, the calculations look credible, and most people don’t recognize manipulation until they’ve signed.
Is it dishonest?
It’s sleazy but the math isn’t fabricated. Competent defense is a modest investment compared to career termination, benefit forfeiture, and future earnings loss. The risk assessment is legitimate.
But the performance is degrading. You already comprehend what’s at risk. You don’t need attorneys manufacturing urgency through calculated emotional appeals. It’s unworthy of professionals claiming to serve military members.
Our approach:
We publish fees to spend consultation time analyzing your case instead of negotiating price.
- Initial/investigative stage: $6,500
- Article 32 preliminary hearing: $10,000–$12,000
- General court-martial trial: $25,000
- Administrative separation board: $15,000–$20,000
Travel expenses (flights, lodging, transportation) are billed separately and disclosed before you sign anything.
Market rates we track:
- Initial/investigative stage: $4,500 to $8,000
- Article 32 preliminary hearing: $8,000 to $20,000
- General court-martial trial: $15,000 to over $100,000
- Administrative separation board: $12,000 to $50,000
Trial fees need to be carefully reviewed:
Some firms cap included days. Additional days cost thousands each. Some define trial “days” as 8 hours and bill hourly beyond that threshold. Some exclude travel days from trial fees entirely. Make sure you check the terms of what’s included in a trial fee.
Our trial fee is comprehensive: all work, all on-site time, all travel. Established beforehand. If trial duration extends, no supplemental charges apply. The trial fee stated in the initial agreement is the fee.
The Article 32 Hearing is Not About Probable Cause
Two rules: Never waive the Article 32 hearing unless you receive substantial documented concessions in return. And don’t listen to people who call it a “probable cause hearing.” That description misses what actually happens and why it matters.
The preliminary hearing officer’s job isn’t limited to probable cause. RCM 405 requires the PHO to “include any additional matters useful to the convening authority or special trial counsel in determining disposition,” and the Manual’s Appendix 2.1 directs analysis of whether “admissible evidence will probably be sufficient to obtain and sustain a finding of guilty in a trial by court-martial when viewed objectively by an unbiased factfinder.”
That’s a reasonable doubt standard, not probable cause. The PHO must assess whether the evidence can sustain conviction, not merely whether charges are supportable. This creates defense opportunity. If we demonstrate at the Article 32 that witnesses contradict each other, that forensic evidence doesn’t support the allegations, or that constitutional violations will keep evidence from being admitted at trial, the PHO’s report becomes a roadblock for OSTC. When the hearing officer recommends against referral based on evidentiary weakness, OSTC has to justify overriding that recommendation or dismiss the case.
Most defense counsel treat the Article 32 as a paper exercise. We treat it as the first and sometimes only chance to stop a prosecution before it starts.
The Article 32 serves multiple functions. It forces the government to preview its evidence before trial. It reveals how prepared the prosecution is and whether they’ve investigated exculpatory leads.
How OSTC changed our blueprint in a good way:
Command discretion over serious charges no longer exists. For offenses like Article 120, OSTC makes charging decisions independently. That centralization creates defense leverage if you understand their priorities and communicate honestly and professionally with their attorneys. OSTC faces institutional pressure to maintain high conviction rates, not to prosecute every allegation. Unlike traditional trial counsel who answered to convening authorities concerned about optics, OSTC has professional independence to dismiss weak cases they believe will result in acquittal.
Why We Enlist OSTC:
The days of holding favorable evidence for trial are finished. With OSTC, defense must present exculpatory material during investigation or at the Article 32.
When OSTC evaluates a case as high-risk for acquittal, they dismiss it, negotiate non-criminal resolutions, reduce charges, or return the matter to command for Special Court-Martial, Article 15, or administrative action. They protect their conviction statistics by avoiding trials they might lose.
This approach requires credibility. OSTC won’t consider defense presentations unless counsel has established trustworthiness through transparent communications and decades of work in military justice. We’ve built our reputation by being accurate when we present evidence, acknowledging weaknesses in our own cases when they exist, and never bluffing about what we can prove. That history gives us access to OSTC decision-makers and ensures they evaluate what we present on its merits.
Free Call, Free Case Review for JBLM Soldiers and Airmen
If you are stationed at Joint Base Lewis-McChord and facing investigation, court-martial, or administrative action under the UCMJ, call us at 800-319-3134 for a confidential case review. We have defended Soldiers and Airmen at JBLM for more than twenty years. We’ve worked with OSTC since its creation and understand how to engage them during investigation before charges are preferred. JBLM generates serious cases requiring expert defense representation.