William Joseph Mills

I graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2006 with a degree in Political Science, Finance, and Economics. I stayed around Champaign for law school and graduated in 2009. I then worked at a big law firm in downtown Chicago. It was boring, so I quit in early 2011.

I thought that I could not be happy practicing law - I was wrong. After I quit the traditional law firm life, I began representing my own clients. I realize now that I love helping normal people and small business owners address a variety of legal issues. I am passionate about helping startups, social enterprises, and nonprofits. I also handle issues involving copyright, BitTorrent downloads, trademark, defamation, free speech issues, insurance, landlord-tenant, and wills. For BitTorrent and defamation issues, I serve as a subpoena defense resource attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. I am also a member of Harvard's Online Media Legal Network.

I love social entrepreneurship and technology. I have started and failed at creating a charitable vitamin company called UnaBellaVita. I am now working on building Storymap and Polity. My hobbies include photography, video, front-end programming, hiking, writing folk songs, and writing stories.

Political participation and activism are recurring themes in my life. I participated in and setup many public debates back in my University days. I wrote a political column in the student paper and created a blog with a collection of writers. I worked for former Governor Jim Edgar at the Institute of Government and Public Affairs. I'm an Abe Lincoln lover and coincidentally was the Lincoln Academy Student Laureate back yonder in my glory days. Nowadays, I am unhappy with both political parties. I am slowly at work on a short book that hopes to create a new political philosophy that combines the best ideas of free markets and of a morality that focuses on the most vulnerable members of society.

I claim to be the friendliest attorney in Chicago, so don’t hesitate to contact me:

@billyjoemills