For Spyker, it’s about servicing customers—as long as there’s time for the golf course, too

Javier Spyker has been an estate planning/small business attorney in Beaverton for seven years

Like a good crop of filberts — hazelnuts to the hip crowd — Javier Spyker’s law office is growing.

The Hillsboro native and Tigard resident opened his Beaverton office in 2015 as “a one-man band.”

“I was answering the phone myself, sharpening the pencils,” says Spyker. “I started very slowly — one or two clients a week. I tried to do good work and get the word out there.”

When Spyker started the practice, he was helping three types of clients — those with estate planning needs, small business owners and family members who needed assistance taking care of probates and estates for loved ones.

“Those three practice areas continue today,” Spyker says.

Now he has plenty of help. Attorney Audrey Tam, who has worked with him for two years, shares estate planning and probate duties. Paralegals Alex Arce and Georgia Davis help handle various needs that arise.

“We’ve grown considerably,” Spyker says. “I went from having three or four open files a month to 30 or 40 today.”

Spyker’s practice is called “Hernandez and Associates.” His uncle and law partner, David Hernandez, practices law in Bandon. “I use the same law firm name, except I practice in Beaverton,” he says.

Sports has been an important part of the lives of Javier and his family, including wife Lindsay and children Anthony, 21, and Olivia, 19. Javier was a linebacker and safety who also played wingback in the Wing-T for Coach Dave Ackerman at Hillsboro High. Anthony was a running back and Olivia a four-year golf letterman at Tigard High.

Golf has been a central theme in the Spyker family.

“I married into a golfing family,” Javier says with a smile. “Lindsay’s father is an extremely good golfer. She is why I’m interested in the sport.”

Spyker learned a lot playing sports as a child.

“Some of the best memories of my life are playing recreational sports on teams with volunteer coaches,” he says. “Playing Pop Warner football and Reedville baseball and having coaches and parents volunteer their time to make a good experience for the kids — that left a big impression on me.

“I try to pay it back. I helped coach my kids’ T-ball team and Lindsay coached their soccer teams. Later, I helped coach Anthony’s football teams. And then there was bringing golf in. Youth golf has been a great thing for our family.”

During his time attending Portland State, Spyker worked on the grounds crew at Pumpkin Ridge, “raking bunkers with (former superintendent) Bill Webster,” he says. Spyker remembers the great Jerry Mowlds giving lessons on the driving range and Mark Keating developing a kids’ program.

“My daughter was the perfect age at its inception,” Spyker says. “They had little team contests involving boys and girls. I distinctly remember (Olivia) getting in the car and saying, ‘We beat the boys today.’ ”

Javier Spyker likes reading about sports, too. It’s part of the reason he chose to become a supporting partner for me — one of his clients — and kerryeggers.com. Thanks Javier!

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It all started for Spyker growing up in Hillsboro in the ‘80s and ’90s with an older brother and young sister.

“Intel hadn’t taken over yet,” he says. “My elementary school in Reedville was surrounded by filbert orchards.”

Javier’s parents owned an automotive shop. For the kids, it was a blue-collar existence.

“We were sweeping those floors and learning how to turn a wrench,” he says. “My first jobs were at Bruce Chevrolet and Hank’s Grocery Store.

“I figured I’d paint and fix cars for a living, but then I realized the mechanics were driving the junkers and were always working on everybody’s nice stuff. The painters were a little bit loopy because they’d been exposed to chemicals. I didn’t see a healthy future there.”

Spyker studied environmental and geotechnical engineering at Portland State.

“I was interested in how cities grow and big projects get done,” he says.

During his senior year, Spyker took a couple of environmental science and policy classes. He attended a public hearing on expansion of urban growth boundaries and the transitioning of industrial land into residential lands.

“They were dealing with Superfund sites down on the waterfront,” he says. “It was an interesting study. You had homeowners, land owners and community citizens testifying, and the city council and the planning commission (members) are snoozing through their testimony, not really paying attention. It was pro forma. They were having these hearings because they have to, not because they ought to.

“Then you see a couple of attorneys get up there representing land owners, telling what they’re going to do to stop the project. Everybody perks up. The whole room starts listening. I thought, ‘That’s cool. At least they listen to the lawyers.” Then you had engineers and geologists get up and talk, and everybody goes back to sleep.”

Spyker’s capstone (senior project) at PSU was related to land use. After he turned it in, he sought out the instructor.

“Was I right?” he asked. “ Is my analysis correct?”

“It doesn’t matter who’s right or what the analysis was,” the instructor answered bluntly. “It’s what the lawyers say. You can have all the science in the world, but the lawyers are going to be the ones who figure this out.’ ”

“That was interesting to me,” Javier says.

Spyker graduated in 2009.

“The economy had jumped into a recession,” he says. “There were no longer construction jobs. Rather than not be able to use my degree and education, I decided to go to law school.”

Spyker got his law degree from Willamette in 2013. The practical experience he got during his years at the Salem school was invaluable.

The first summer, Javier worked for a “big insurance company” in Portland, doing compliance and review of financial products — e.g. 401K, IRA, life insurance, pension plans, short- and long-term disability, annuities.

“I was also listening to all the sales statistics about how the boomer generation was getting old and the transfer of wealth was going to occur,” he says. “Then on the other side, we were trying to hold the ship together based on what the product sales guys wanted to do. They wanted to promise big returns, promise annuities, sell things.

“It was eye-opening to learn about all the financial products and to learn how these products either help families or don’t meet their expectations, often because they are more expensive than some of the other financial products out there.”

From his experience that summer — “I saw corporate law from inside the high-rise buildings,” he says — Spyker decided he didn’t want to be an insurance attorney.

“I learned about the hoops that families had to go through to collect financial benefits and the measures the insurance company take to make the correct payout,” he says. “I realized it probably wasn’t the place for me.”

The summer between his sophomore and junior year at Willamette, Javier worked for a large government entity in Portland.

“We dealt with tax issues, we sold bonds, we bought property and we co-mingled with all the activities in the Portland area, setting garbage rates and dump fees on general contractors,” he says. “I found that I also didn’t feel at home with big government. I felt like some of the staff were driving policy rather than the elected, who should have been. Truth, though, was that staff were the subject matter experts.

“Getting to see how the slow-moving wheels of government worked was eye-opening. I felt like the lawyers and fancy people in government put themselves higher than paralegals or the people on the ground who are actually doing the work. Not the best of cultures and not a good fit for me.”

The next summer, Spyker worked as a law clerk for a solo practitioner in Bandon.

“I started researching and writing for this small-town lawyer and he eventually hired me to work for him (beginning in 2013),” he says. “Much of my work was rolling over California estates. People would sell their house in the Bay Area for $1.2 million, and they could buy front row on the Oregon Coast for half of that. I was updating those estate plans and doing small probates.”

During his two years in Bandon, Spyker began worked on what he refers to as the “Cranberry Case.”

“It was about the Bandon cranberry growers and the price they were getting for their fruit,” he says. “They were getting pretty good returns, but Ocean Spray —the nation’s leading seller and buyer of cranberry products — did some things that were anti-competitive.”

Normally, Spyker’s current practice is “pretty mellow and predictable,” he says.

“But for the last nine years, nights and weekends, I’ve been litigating against Ocean Spray over anti-trust matters,” he says.

Javier joined a group of “12 ragtag attorneys” from the states of Wisconsin, New York, New Jersey and Oregon on behalf of the Bandon cranberry farmers.

“We were up against the largest law firm in the world, Latham and Watkins,” he says.

It was settled out of court eight years into the case, around Christmas time last year. Terms of the settlement are confidential, “but I’m very proud of the work I did on behalf of the farmers and the results we got,” Javier says. “The farmers all got checks, and will keep getting checks for several years.”

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In 2015, Spyker left the Southern Oregon coast and returned to more familiar country. He began his practice in Beaverton in 2015 and moved to its current spot on SW Beaverton-Hillsdale Highway a year ago.

“After working a couple of years in a small town area, I figured I can do the same thing here that I was doing there,” he says. “I’d be able to serve more sophisticated families with more complex assets, and still offer small-town service as means of building relationships with clients.”

Spyker chose not to get on with a major law firm.

Says Javier: “I view the big firms as more transactional; ‘What can you do for me today? Oh, I don’t do that — see you later.’ I try to answer people’s questions and treat them like I’m going to see them again, because that’s a better practice model.”

Spyker serves clients in the Beaverton/Hillsboro area, but also down to Wilsonville, over to the coast and up to Columbia County. He avoided having an office in downtown Portland for a reason.

“Being in Beaverton near Highway 217 is a good middle ground for folks who don’t want to navigate Portland parking or have your windows knocked out,” he says. “Lawyers are looking to work from home in order to stay out of the downtown core. It’s the new reality.”

Spyker knows the Oregon marketplace well.

“Families are getting older,” he says. “The wealth needs to be transferred to the next generation. I see that as a valuable service to families. Without estate planning, families get less, and they get it later. With a good plan, they preserve more assets and the hard work that went into getting those assets.

“Oregon is a place where people work hard for their stuff. We don’t accumulate wealth as quickly in Oregon as opposed to people in the Silicon Valley or LA. Oregonians make money by working hard, saving it and making good decisions. … I like to serve the more traditional economy.”

Spyker likes being small, too.

“It’s important that we’re accessible,” he says. “I try to answer my own phone as much as possible, which surprises people. I try to be different in that regard.

“People deserve better from the legal system. For a lot of people, probate is the first time they’ve had to encounter a lawyer. When grandpa passes and we have to deal with his 400 acres in Boardman and deferred stock options, it brings complexity into people’s lives. They need an attorney to help them navigate that.”

Spyker served last year as an adjunct professor at Lewis and Clark College of Law.

“I taught their ‘wills and trust’ class last spring,” he says.

If Javier doesn’t answer the phone and you’re having trouble reaching him, try him at the local golf course. An 11.5 handicapper, he gets golf privileges for volunteering at tournaments at Pumpkin Ridge.

Javier is passionate about his golf game. He carries an 11.5 handicap (courtesy Javier Spyker)

“The best golf is free golf,” he says, smiling. “I took two weeks away from the office and volunteered during the LIV event, I hand-watered and set tees and helped make the golf course better.”

And whenever he gets a chance to visit the place where his law career started …

“I love Bandon golf,” he says. “I probably had 20 rounds there through the last year. I’m pretty aggressive about getting down there to play. I like Sheep Ranch the best, with 13 greens right on the ocean. You don’t go there to shoot low scores; you go there to take it all in. I did shoot a 79 there this summer, so I felt pretty good about that.”

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