Our People

Julie focuses her practice on local government and land use matters, counseling clients on land use, FOIA, open meetings, ethics, social media and many other topics.  She regularly attends board and commission meetings on behalf of the firm’s government clients. She has extensive experience negotiating annexation and development agreements, drafting zoning and other development regulations and approvals, and negotiating development projects, including TIF and special service area financing transactions. She also represents clients in land use disputes and defends clients in lawsuits brought in state and federal courts.

Julie currently serves as City Attorney for Lake Forest and Park Ridge, and Village Attorney for Glenview, Gilberts, and Lindenhurst. She serves as counsel to numerous Illinois municipal libraries and library districts. She also serves as special counsel to government clients on FOIA, zoning and land use, social media, litigation and related matters.

Julie is the author of the local government blog, Municipal Minute, where she writes about current cases, laws, and other topics of interest to local government officials and employees. She is also the editor of Ancel Glink Today, an e-newsletter distributed to firm clients twice each month. Julie is co-chair of Ancel Glink's land use practice. She serves on the Board of Directors for the Illinois Institute for Continuing Legal Education (IICLE).

Prior to her law career, Julie served for eight years in the United States Army, Military Intelligence Branch, as a Korean cryptologic-linguist.

Experience

Particular highlights of her recent practice include:

• Advise and train government employees and officials on FOIA, Open Meetings Act, meeting rules of procedures, government use of social media, ethics, and the conduct of zoning hearings, among many other legal issues
• Comprehensive rewrite of zoning, subdivision, sign, and other development regulations

• Prepare administrative policies on OMA, FOIA, social media, and the conduct of meetings and hearings
• Successfully defended a municipality in a challenge to its billboard sign regulations, affirmed by the Illinois Appellate Court
• Successfully defended a municipality in an annexation challenge, affirmed by the Illinois Appellate Court
• Successfully defended a dispute between a municipality and land owner regarding maintenance of a private pond, affirmed by the Illinois Appellate Court
• Successfully defended a municipality in a lawsuit challenging the enforcement of the municipality’s zoning ordinance involving a tree house
• Successfully defended a municipality against a developer's equal protection challenge to the municipality's denial of a rezoning application for a student housing development
  
• Negotiated settlements to resolve land use litigation, including enforcement of an agreement involving a mixed-use downtown development and resolution of a dispute involving the sale of municipal property for a multi-family residential development
• Retained as an expert witness in multiple land use cases

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Presentations

Julie is a frequent speaker at local and national conferences on a variety of local government and land use issues, including the following:  

• Legal and Ethical Issues With Social Media Use by Local Governments
• First Amendment Audit Training

• OMA, FOIA and Records Retention Training
• Development and Annexation Agreements
• Controversial Land Uses
• Municipalities and the First Amendment
• A DIY Guide to Drafting Ordinances & Resolutions (Minus the Hourly Rate)
• Vacant Properties and Foreclosures: Minimizing the Impacts and Maximizing the Opportunities

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Publications

Julie has published on a variety of land use, local government, and related matters, including the following: 

• Handling the Land Use Case (Thompson Reuters, 2022-23)
• Development Agreements: A Municipal Perspective (ACREL, 2022, republished in The Practical Real Estate Lawyer, September 2022)

• Zoning (IICLE Municipal Law Series, 2021)
• Subdivisions (IICLE Municipal Law Series, 2021)
• Illinois Freedom of Information Act Exemptions (IICLE Sunshine Laws, 2020)
• Planning and Control of Land Development: Cases and Materials, 9th Ed. (LexisNexis, 2016)
• Land Use Law: Zoning in the 21st Century (ALM, 2015)
• Municipal Law Deskbook, Chapter on Open Meetings and Open Records Laws (ABA Press, 2015)
• 10 Guidelines from the PAC on the OMA’s Public Comment Rule (IML Review, Sept. 2014)
• Common Zoning Definitions Found Unconstitutional in TLC v. Elgin (PEL, 2014)
• Communicating in an Electronic Age (The Commissioner, 2014)
• The Big Chill? - The Likely Impact of Koontz (Touro Law Review, Vol. 30, No. 2, 2014)
• Social Media & Local Governments: Navigating the New Public Square (ABA Press, 2013)
• Development by Agreement: A Tool Kit for Developers and Local Governments (ABA, 2012)
• To Tweet or Not to Tweet: Use of Social Networking in Land Use Planning (ZPLR, May 2011)
• Hard Times for Real Estate Developers and the Impact on Municipalities (IML Review, 2008)
• Bargaining for Development (ELI, July 2003)

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Honors & Awards