Acceptance, understanding, and empowerment are key tenets in Marissa Korbel’s practice. Working primarily with estate and trust litigation, legal malpractice, and vulnerable abuse claims, Marissa helps clients navigate complex and painful challenges with deep compassion and exceptionally sharp legal skills.
Early interests in theater and poetry have served her well as she has brought her talents for crisp and compelling writing and looking beyond the obvious to the law. She came to Lewis and Clark Law School from San Francisco, and quickly found her place among the passionate, caring, and committed people who recognize that lawyers can be life changing. While in school, she spent two years as Articles Editor of the Lewis and Clark Law Review and she was awarded the Pro Bono and Volunteer Award all three years.
She clerked for the Hon. Robert E. Jones at the U.S. District Court of Oregon, the Hon. Howard R. Lloyd at the U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, and the Hon. Patricia McGuire in the Multnomah County Circuit Court’s Family Law Division.
Before joining Allegiant Law in 2022, she worked as a staff attorney for the Victim Rights Law Center in Portland, and trained Violence Against Women Act grantees on compliance, with a special emphasis on privacy protections for campus and minor survivors of gender-based violence.
Favorite Legal Movie: Legally Blonde
Favorite Place in the Northwest: The Oregon Coast, specifically Depoe Bay and Manzanita
Outside the Office: Marissa is a published poet and award-winning essayist whose non-legal writing appears in The Washington Post, Harper’s Bazaar, Guernica, and the critically acclaimed essay collection Burn it Down: Woman Writing about Anger (2019). An editor-at-large at The Rumpus, she frequently interviews other authors and poets.