Retired Lawyer
Mr. Lee is a 45-year veteran civil rights lawyer. He served as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Justice, leading federal civil rights enforcement in the Clinton Administration from December 1997-January 2001. Prior to DOJ, Bill was Assistant Counsel in the New York office of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the non-profit law firm founded by the late Justice Thurgood Marshall from 1974-83 and head of civil rights enforcement at the Center for law in the Public interest in Los Angeles from 1984-88. He was co-head of the NAACP LDF’s Los Angeles office from 1989-97. After his service in DOJ, Bill prosecuted civil rights and disability rights actions with the San Francisco firm Lieff, Cabraser, Heimann & Bernstein, the Oakland firm Lewis, Feinberg, Lee & Jackson, PC. and the Denver-based Civil Rights Education and Enforcement Center in its Berkeley office. Bill graduated from Columbia University Law School in 1974 and Yale College in 1971.