We recently connected with Amanda DuBois and have shared our conversation below.

Amanda, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

My business as a lawyer is inextricably intertwined with my non profit work and my books, so I’ll answer it this way. Several years ago, I wrote a series of books related to basic legal rights and responsibilities, and I ended up teaching the content to a group of people that had been in prison.

This was going to be very straightforward; how to be a good employee, how to rent an apartment, that sort of thing. My world was rocked when one of the students raised his hand and said, “This is all very helpful, but the problem is we can’t get a job or housing because we’re all felons.”

And then they started teaching me. This pivotal moment in my life is when I began to learn about what it was like to get out of prison. It was heart-wrenching to discover how formerly incarcerated people were consistently set up to fail. One of my new friends told me that the scariest night of his life was his first night out of prison. All he wanted was to create a new life for himself. But he had nowhere to go. No money. No family. He teared up as he shared his story, and boy oh boy, did that ever stick with me.

It didn’t take me long to realize that the reason my new friends were struggling was because of laws and policies that may have been well-intentioned to protect society, but in reality, they made life incredibly hard for those reentering from prison. And because I’m a lawyer, I figured I could do something about their plight. So, I came up with this idea that I could teach formerly incarcerated people how to organize so that they would have a voice in our political system. That idea became the Civil Survival Project, which is an organization that offers legal assistance and teaches advocacy skills to formerly incarcerated people across Washington State.

By this time, I had become familiar with the saying coined by my friend, Glenn Martin, “Those who are closest to the problem are closest to the solutions, but furthest from the resources.” And so I set about hiring people closest to the problems into leadership positions where they could help craft political and policy solutions. And it worked!

To date, Civil Survival Project has trained over five hundred impacted people in workshops across Washington. These leaders have changed several laws here, and now they’ve added legal services to their mission. In 2023 the Civil Survival legal team helped 1,095 clients with reentry related legal issues.

It was being proximate to so many amazing formerly incarcerated mothers that inspired my forthcoming book, Unshackled, the third novel in my Camille Delaney mystery series. I knew I had to tell the world about women in prison and what damage is done to our communities when we separate children from their mothers. Writing about this topic under the cover of a suspenseful page-turner was the best way I could think of to do that.

Several of the book’s main characters are mothers who served time in prison. Many of the scenes are taken from real stories of my friends who were dealing with the challenges of being a mother in prison, and how difficult it was for them to resume parenting upon release. These are the stories that drove me to create a compelling mystery with the dual purpose of being a page-turner while educating readers about the inequities of our criminal legal system.

Amanda, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My career has taken me from the labor and delivery suite to the courtroom to state prisons. As a former nurse and now a family law attorney who, in addition to my busy family law practice, advocates for mothers who’ve served time in prison, it’s become crystal clear to me that strong families create strong communities. And this means we need to do everything in our power to support people to be the best parents they can be, especially those who’ve been incarcerated because their children are our society’s most at-risk.

It is not lost on me that as the founder of DuBois Levias Law Group I have immense privilege, and with that comes a big responsibility to give back. I’m proud to have founded (and provided initial funding for) Civil Survival Project, and to serve on the boards of P.D.A. (implementing community-based responses to public safety issues), and Freedom Education Project Puget Sound (providing college education inside the women’s prison). And in 2022, the Washington State Bar Association honored me with its Sally P. Savage Leadership in Philanthropy APEX award.

I’m grateful that I can donate all proceeds of my Camille Delaney legal thrillers. My current favorite recipient is the Full Circle Scholarship that I created at my alma mater, Seattle University School of Law. It provides tuition assistance to students who’ve been impacted by the criminal legal system. Other recipients of the book proceeds are individuals and organizations that focus on social justice issues.

Have you ever had to pivot?

Pivoting from being a “token woman law partner” at a firm of older men back in the early nineties, to founding my own law firm at a time when I didn’t know any woman law firm owners was as exhilarating as it was challenging.

Back then, there were no mentors for me. There simply weren’t any women to model myself after, and so I had to make it up as I went along. I can’t count how many self-help books I read to give myself the confidence and skills to envision what I wanted to create. The one thing I learned is the importance of persistence. I quite simply never even considered that I would fail. Not once.

I pivoted from a traditional law firm hierarchy to something that resonated with my own style. What makes my law firm different from most is that, as a nurse, I came from the medical field. In that world, doctors graduate from medical school, and then go into residencies to learn the actual art and craft of medicine. And so, that’s how I built my law firm. All our lawyers begin their careers working closely with senior lawyers. We don’t throw a new lawyer into a situation to see if they will sink or swim. That’s what happened to me, and I’ll never forget it. It was scary and it for sure didn’t serve our clients to send me into court to “learn it the hard way.” Nope. I’ll never do that to my lawyers. And that’s what makes our firm stand out. We have very well-trained lawyers.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

Like I mentioned, when I was a much younger lawyer, I decided to leave the law firm where all of my partners were older men. We had mutually decided to part ways, but they owed me money and so I had to hire a lawyer friend to represent me.

The partners dug in their heels and refused to pay what they owed me and so the case went to mediation. In their mediation submission they wrote the following, which I’ll never forget: “Ms. DuBois is just a dilettante doctor’s wife dabbling at the law.” Wow. Seriously? That lit a fire under me that has never dimmed. Once I was free of those guys, I never looked back. I founded my own law firm and am proud to say that it’s one of Seattle’s longest standing women-owned law firms. And by any measure we’ve succeeded beyond my wildest dreams – not just financially, but by making an impact on the lives of so many clients going through the incredibly stressful divorce process.

The financial resources I’ve built at the firm give me the ability to work on social justice projects that serve the formerly incarcerated community, and to be able to take time to write the Camille Delaney legal thrillers. I would never be where I am today if I hadn’t been brave enough to leave my former law partners. And learning resilience has allowed me to create the life I have today.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.amandadubois.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amandadubois206/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/amanda.dubois.author
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amanda-dubois-2b46071/
• Other: DuBois Levias Law Group: https://duboislaw.net/

Image Credits
Nicole Goddard Photography (sitting around in the cactus grove and the feature photo sitting on top of desk). Suzanne Rothmeyer – with dog in lap and team boat