Hubs
“Lily Chinn is praised by interviewees as a "a top-notch talent who recognizes the issues that will be the key to the resolution of any given matter.” She is a trial attorney notable for her handling of enforcement defense. She also manages incident response.”
Chambers USA 2019
Lily Chinn is a strategic advocate and litigator for her corporate and individual clients, providing counsel on the intersection between workplace safety, environmental and natural resources issues. She focuses on civil and criminal defense, including internal investigations and suspension or debarment proceedings, and has tried cases across the country.
Lily is well-versed in the litigation of complex appellate and district court cases in venues nationwide. She draws on her many years of experience at the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) in Washington, D.C., to provide her clients with high-level, thoughtful counsel. Through her work as a trial attorney in the Environmental Defense Section—where she litigated a variety of cases across the country under the federal pollution statutes, including CERCLA actions and wetlands enforcement—she has in-depth knowledge of the decision-making processes at the DOJ, Environmental Protection Agency and other federal agencies. As a former prosecutor in the DOJ's Computer Crimes and Intellectual Property Section and one of the founding co-chairs of the DOJ's Environment Division's E-Discovery Working Group, Lily is also able to provide technologically savvy counsel to her clients on the preservation, collection, production and use of electronic information.
This experience, coupled with the relationships Lily developed during her tenure at the DOJ, provides a highly skilled background as she advises clients facing enforcement actions. Recently, following a five-year joint investigation by the DOJ, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and a State Attorney General's Office, she was granted a declination for her client of all federal criminal and civil charges, and negotiated a favorable civil resolution with the state. In another matter involving a United States Attorney's Office and the Department of the Interior, her legal team filed a pretrial motion, marking the first time a court has held that criminal charges against independent contractors are outside the scope of the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act.