A Career Serving the Public
Lynne Williams wasn’t planning to become a lawyer.
Her academic background was in psychology, having earned a Ph.D. from USC Dornsife’s program in 1981. After graduating, the Brooklyn native spent more than a decade in the realms of progressive politics and community organizing. She worked as a jury selection consultant on political trials and for Democrat Gary Hart’s 1984 presidential campaign, driving from state to state “for like 50 bucks a week.”
But in 1994, Williams was a single mother living in Northern California with her 6-year-old son, Brendan, who was about to start first grade.
“I had been working out of my house so I could be there when he got home in the afternoons,” Williams explained. “On his first day of school I said, ‘Have fun, you’re going to love it!’ and he replied, ‘I’m so excited to be starting big boy school — what are you going to do now?’ I was 44 at the time, but I thought, “Oh, I don’t know, maybe I’ll go to law school.”
And that she did, graduating from Golden Gate University School of Law in 1998 with a J.D. and a certificate in public interest law. Partly because her son had a disability, she became interested in special education law and estate planning for families with disabled and mentally ill members. Later, Williams added land use, zoning and environmental law to her specialties in addition to representing political activists arrested for civil disobedience.
Her initial engagement with politics began after she finished her doctorate and volunteered for Democratic social activist and politician Tom Hayden. He was leading the Campaign for Economic Democracy, a progressive, grassroots political movement that promoted environ-mental protection, civil rights and solar energy.
“During that time, I met [California Gov.] Jerry Brown and was very interested in what he was doing and wanting to pursue in terms of alternative energy and sustainability,” Williams said. “I got totally hooked.”
In 1982, she was hired as Hayden’s finance director during his election campaign for the California state Legislature.
“I’m outgoing and I liked fundraising, and I was thrilled that he got elected. I was spoiled by working for someone in my first campaign who actually got elected,” she laughed. “Luckily I had that to look back on along with all the people I worked for over the years who didn’t get elected, including myself.”
Williams, former state chair of Maine’s Green Independent Party, decided to run for political office in 2004, making an unsuccessful bid for the Maine House of Representatives as a Green Party candidate. She announced her candidacy for the party’s nomination for governor of Maine in the 2010 election, though she dropped out of the race that March in order to run for the state’s District 28 Senate seat. Williams received 12 percent of the votes in her district, finishing in third place, though she hardly considers these experiences a failure.
“[The campaigns] were very satisfying to me. Sometimes I think it’s easier to run as a third-party person because you don’t have the same high expectations. If you do better than you are expected to do, it’s still a big win.”
At USC Dornsife, Williams studied alternative dispute resolution as part of her dissertation research. She did field work and observation at the country’s first community mediation program, in Dorchester, Mass. This work was the foundation of what is now 30 years of experience as an interpersonal and community mediator.
“I feel like I have always used my psychology training in many different real-world ways in my legal profession, my writing and all sorts of other ways,” she said.
Williams is considering running for probate court judge for Hancock County, Maine, in 2018, a part-time position that would allow her to keep her solo law practice in Bar Harbor.
“[In Maine] probate isn’t just wills and estates,” she explained. “It also involves people who are judged to be incompetent and have hearings, plus guardianships, adoptions and name changes. People go in to see this judge when they’re not in very good situations.”
Williams considers public service to be extremely important, believing it should be something that you contribute to your community, state or government separate from your paid job.
“About 30 percent of my legal work has always been pro bono. Sometimes when we need gas money we’ll have them pass the hat,” she joked. “But basically it’s my community service.”
Williams is one of the leading authorities on medical marijuana law in Maine and, as general counsel of Legalize Maine, she co-authored the recreational marijuana legalization initiative appearing on the Maine ballot in November. She sees this popular initiative as providing a new economic sector for her state.
“We only have a few paper mills left. We need to create new economic sectors, and we’re a big farming state, we have a lot of land and it’s affordable, so it’s a natural fit for Maine. We’re a libertarian state, people are very tolerant and I think it will provide opportunities for small businesses.”
One of the achievements she is most proud of in her legal career was a 2008 civil disobedience trial in which she represented a group of political activists who had been arrested after entering a Republican senator’s office and refusing to leave.
“My colleague and I worked really hard with the defendants to frame a story of why they did this. We told the story about why — even if they were mistaken, which they were — they felt that international law compelled them to do this.
“There were tears in the jury’s eyes, and they went out and came back two hours later and said not guilty for all of them. Even though technically they were guilty, that was what we call in the trade ‘jury nullification,’ where a jury decides to acquit even though the law would compel them to convict these people. Afterwards, some of the jury members came out and met with us, and they said, ‘We would’ve been out in 45 minutes … but we wanted to get the free lunch.’”
Read more stories from USC Dornsife Magazine’s Fall 2016-Spring 2017 issue >>