In His Own Words Retired Colonel, Former Army JAG Commander, & Felony Prosecutor. Bill Meili talks about his practice and his focus on saving careers, protecting retirements and reclaiming the reputations and honor of those who serve this country.

What areas of the law have you chosen to focus on and why?

There's three primary areas that I'm focusing on right now. The first is officer resignation, military officer resignations, and these types of cases.

I like doing it. First of all, I've just been doing it for, you know, the better part of 26, 27 years now. I enjoy the client. I like who they are and what they stand for.

And they fall roughly in two categories. Either something has happened that is threatening their career and they want to continue their career and reach a retirement status. I help them do that. On the other hand, there are situations where an officer, a professional officer, a doctor, for instance, really has either finished their commitment or they have other things going on in their life when they really need to submit a resignation, have that resignation approved, and then get out with an honorable discharge.
I help them do that as well, so I help folks stay in who need to and want to stay in, and I help folks who need to and want to get out. I do both those things and enjoy doing it.

On a second front, I've been dealing with professionals, primarily doctors and pilots for many years now, and those are licensing issues. Something has cropped up in their life that threatens or puts their license in jeopardy. And there's often a board, a licensing board, agency, or multiple agencies that are looking at that, and they quite rightly, they want to make sure that that individual is trustworthy and that clients and clientele are safe with them. And here, the thing that I enjoy doing with these types of cases is, there's multiple layers of what's going on with an individual in this situation, and so establishing trust, establishing good communication with that client, that pulls out, that develops the trust between us, and I can find out really what's going on with that person. Once I do that, I can convey that story to the decision maker honestly.

And many times what we find is that when that story is conveyed like that, the decision maker will decide this person is trustworthy and we're going to give that license back if it's been suspended or revoked, or we're not going to take it in the first place.

And very similarly I've been working with security clearance cases from the start of my practice. And there, many times what happens is you have a person who is in jeopardy of losing a security clearance and a career as a result of that they can't work in high level government or contractor positions. But what's happened is there's a delay. They have had some problems in the past that they are either correcting or can correct. And that story needs to be properly told to the agency, to the government agency that's issuing the security clearance. There's the general rules that they're looking for, and then there are all sorts of mitigating factors, and I concentrate with the client on building those mitigating factors into a winnable argument.

I contacted Col. Meili as a fellow practitioner to gain some context and perspective on a pretty complex set of issues. Because I practice in a different field of law, Col. Meili's extensive expertise was invaluable and he was more than generous with his time. A skilled and dedicated professional who cares deeply about obtaining the best possible outcome for his clients, Bill's a leader in this field.

- Steffen Chapin


After an exhaustive search of military attorneys, I came across the name of Bill Meili. From my first email exchange and telephone call, I knew that Bill was the right person to handle my case. I had discussed my unique circumstance with a handful of other attorneys who felt it may be too difficult to achieve the outcome that I was seeking - but Bill was interested in me and my case, and wholeheartedly believed that we had the ball in our court. I could tell that Bill cared about me as a person and soldier, not just viewing me as a paycheck.

- Anonymous