Articles

JUDY WILLIAMS - Pilot Person By Jennifer Armstrong

February 24, 1997

Appeared in the Los Angeles Times Daily Pilot Section

Adopting a new way of life helping families.

She is adopting a way to unite children with families.

Unique Traits. Judy Williams' law practice specializes in an area that she learned more about in life than in legal books.

So the Lido Isle resident---and adoptive mother of three---chose adoption law as the focus of her law office in Orange. Her mission: to make sure pregnant mothers and potential adoptive parents know all their options.

"I don't know how to get the message out to young women that they do have choices," said Williams, a petite 55-year-old.

She started her practice in December. She passed her Bar exam in June after returning to law school 25 years after graduating from college. Before starting her own practice, she took volunteer cases for the Public Law Center in Santa Ana.

In addition to smoothing the way for adoptions, she also takes mediated divorce, custody and property cases.

Birthplace/Background. She and her husband of 33 years,Dick, adopted all three of their children---now 26, 29 and 30. The couple met in speech class at the University of Illinois.

Williams was born and raised in southern Illinois, earned her bachelor's and master's degrees from the state university.

"When I went to college women were either teachers or nurses," she explained. She became an elementary school teacher for six years until she and her husband adopted their first child, Amy, when she was 18 days old.

They lived in several different cities during her husband's 18 years working for IBM. While living in Memphis, Williams and a friend bought a Sylvan Learning Center franchise, which she still owns today.

They settled in California about a year and a half ago, and they now own a place in Thousand Oaks and rent a place on Lido. They hope to soon sell their Thousand Oaks house and find a permanent home in Newport.

Marriage/Family. After adopting Amy, they took in their 5-year-old niece, Teresa, and 6-year-old nephew, Tim, when the children's mother died. Their father, an alcoholic, could not take care of them by himself---so the Williamses adopted the children as their own.

She can empathize with her clients, she said, because she and her husband dealt with infertility and with three adoptions of their own.

When Williams decided to get her law degree a few years ago, her daughter Amy followed in her footsteps and enrolled in Southwestern Law school a year later.

"Going back to school late in life is a challenge," she said. "But everyone was really supportive."

Best Part of Job. She's now working to attract clients by visiting college campuses to put up posters and pamphlets---and even give talks---about adoption as an option.

She already has had 25 clients, her favorite being a couple who came to her office with the newborn baby they wanted to adopt. They had worked with the birth mother throughout her pregnancy, and the adoptive father had been in the delivery room when the baby was born.

"This mother still always talks about how he is by far the most perfect baby," she said.

In her first family law case, she helped a mother win the right to see her four children again. The woman had left them in the care of their grandmother while she worked out her alcoholism; when she returned, the grandmother wouldn't let her see them.

"The best part of my job is feeling like I'm really affecting three people's lives: the child and the two parents," she said. "It's a dream job."