Attorney Profile

Shelley Akamatsu was a Deputy Prosecuting Attorney beginning in 1993, first in Santa Fe, New Mexico and then the Ada County Prosecutors Office. She took over 150 felony cases to trial involving murder, rape, child molestation, complicated white-collar theft, domestic violence, kidnapping, fraud, perjury and drug crimes. She had an extremely high conviction rate. Shelley was the Director of Attorney Development, responsible for designing and implementing the first training curriculum to teach trial advocacy skills to new attorneys. She routinely taught “Aggressive Pretrial Motions,” “The Rules of Evidence,” “Effective Closing Arguments” and “Trial Advocacy” to prosecutor’s nationally and throughout Idaho.

Shelley has prepared thousands of witnesses to testify in court, many of whom were scientific experts, elderly or young children. She has extensive experience handling complicated psychological, mental health, substance abuse and physical and sexual abuse issues. Shelley has appeared daily in front of all the judges in Ada County and is known to them as being an extremely prepared attorney with extensive experience in organizing, handling, presenting and negotiating thousands of cases.

Shelley opened Akamatsu Law PLLC to continue serving her community by working closely with clients who have family law issues. She has been a licensed attorney in New Mexico since 1993 and in Idaho since 1996.