Highlights:   

• Over 25 years of experience;
• Success in numerous high profile criminal defense and civil rights cases;
• Certified by the State Bar of Arizona as a Criminal Law Specialist;
• Awarded an "AV" rating, the highest possible rating by Martindale-Hubbell, the most respected resource for the legal profession world wide;
• The only criminal defense attorney in Flagstaff to be recognized as a Super Lawyer;
• Named one of Arizona's Best Lawyers by Arizona Magazine;
• Legal Committee Member of the National Association for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML)
• Member of several key criminal defense organizations including a Life Member of the National Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys (NACDL) and Member of the Board of Governors of the Arizona Attorneys for Criminal Justice (AACJ);

Lee was born on an Air Force base in Fairbanks, Alaska where his father was a fighter pilot and later grew up in rural Northwest Ohio.  After having worked as a union organizer for Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers Union in Ohio and California, Lee attended law school at The Ohio State University.

During law school, Lee came to Arizona as a National Lawyer's Guild Summer Intern to work with the Navajo Indians. Following graduation in 1983, Lee received a two year fellowship from Howard University to return to Arizona to continue his work with the Navajos. Lee began his legal career representing several thousand Navajo Indians in a century old land dispute between the Navajo and Hopi tribes and the United States government. During this period of time, Lee formed a non-profit law office to provide free legal representation to Native Americans and his work was funded by grants from several private foundations including two MacArthur Foundation Grants, and a fellowship from the Berkeley Law School Foundation.

From 1989 to 1991 Lee worked as a deputy public defender with the Coconino County Public Defender's Office in Flagstaff, Arizona. During that time, Lee handled a wide variety of felony and misdemeanor cases on behalf of indigent defendants. In addition to obtaining not guilty verdicts in several first degree murder cases, Lee also successfully tried numerous felony jury trials, which involved charges ranging from armed robbery, sexual assault, child molestation, kidnapping, aggravated assault, and a variety of felony drug offenses. While at the Public Defender's Office, Lee co-counseled State v. Bible, the first capital murder case in Arizona involving the use of DNA evidence.

In 1991, Lee left the Public Defender's Office to open his own criminal defense practice. Lee is certified by the State Bar of Arizona as a criminal law specialist and his practice currently focuses on the defense of individuals charged with serious drug offenses. Lee also continues to represent individuals charged with a variety of non-drug offenses in both state and federal courts.

In addition to his criminal practice, Lee represents individuals in both civil rights and personal injury cases. Lee successfully represented Native Americans who sued the federal government to stop government fencing and water projects which were destroying or damaging burial areas and other sacred sites on the reservations, in Attakai v. United States. He also successfully represented thousands of Native Americans who sued the federal government to stop their forced relocation from their sacred ancestral homelands in Manybeads v. United States. The clients in Manybeads argued that forced relocation from their ancestral homelands interfered with the free exercise of their religion in violation of the First Amendment to the Constitution. After several years of litigation, Lee helped successfully mediate a settlement of the Manybeads case, which allowed his clients to avoid relocation and to remain on their sacred lands. This mediated settlement was approved by the United States Congress in 1996. Lee's efforts on behalf of his Native American clients have been the subject of numerous news articles in a variety of national publications including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, U.S.A. Today, Newsweek and Time.  Lee's work on the Navajo Hopi Land Dispute was also the subject of the book The Wind Won't Know Me by Emily Benedek.

Lee has also represented inmates at the Coconino County Jail in a class action lawsuit, Davis v. Richards, which successfully challenged the conditions at the jail. The federal court ruled in the inmates' favor and the ruling ultimately led to the construction of a new modern facility and the hiring of an inmate rights attorney to assist inmates with a variety of legal problems.

Lee continues to devote a large part of his practice to civil rights and civil liberties cases. Most recently, Lee has been the lead attorney in Arizona's first racial profiling cases. In some of these cases Lee represented African American and Latino motorists who were stopped, searched and arrested for drug offenses while traveling on Arizona's interstate highways. Lee also represented African American and Latino motorists, in Arnold v. Arizona Department of Public Safety, a federal civil rights lawsuit, who were stopped, detained and searched by the State Police on the interstates in Arizona and who had not committed any criminal offenses. These innocent motorists were also victims of racial profiling and their lawsuit against the Arizona State Police resulted in the State Police being required to maintain and make public, statistical data, including the race or ethnicity of, all motorists who are stopped and/or searched on Arizona highways and to install video cameras in patrol vehicles and videotape the stop and detention of motorists during traffic stops.

Lee was also lead counsel for the Arizona Civil Liberties Union of Arizona in Frazier v. Boomsma where Lee successfully blocked the criminal prosecution of a peace activist who made and sold t- shirts with the names of the soldiers killed in Iraq.

Lee is a member of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL), Arizona Attorneys for Criminal Justice (AACJ), National Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), National Lawyers Guild (NLG), and the Northern Arizona Innocence Project (NAIP). NAIP is one of many "Innocence Projects" around the country where volunteer lawyers, faculty and students are working to exonerate innocent persons who have been wrongfully convicted of a crime. Lee has also been an adjunct professor at Northern Arizona University where he taught criminal law and criminal procedure.

Lee has a peer review rating of AV in the Martindale-Hubbell Law Directory, the world's leading guide to the legal profession. AV Peer Review Rating means that the lawyer has been ranked by his peers at the highest level of professional and ethical excellence. He or she has usually practiced law for many years, and is recognized for the highest levels of skill and integrity. The rating is based on both an attorney's legal ability and their ethical standards.

When Lee is not defending the constitutional, civil and legal rights of his clients, he spends his time with his wife and their twin daughters and their many dogs and cats.