Julie A. Tappendorf

Julie advises the firm’s local government clients on a variety of local government and land use topics, including FOIA, open meetings, ethics, social media use by governments, and zoning and development topics.

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 creator of the popular and award winning local government blog, Municipal Minute, where she writes about current cases, laws, and other topics of interest to local government officials and employees.  She frequently speaks at local and national conferences on a variety of local government topics and has published numerous books and articles on local government and land use issues.

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

Highlights of her legal practice include:

• Advise and train government employees and officials on FOIA, Open Meetings Act, meeting rules of procedures, government use of social media, ethics, 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 zoning hearings
• Successfully defended clients in a variety of land use lawsuits, including a challenge to the constitutionality of a municipality’s historic preservation ordinance, a dispute regarding a home rule municipality’s authority over the sale of municipal property, a challenge to a municipality’s sign ordinance, an annexation challenge, a dispute involving maintenance of a private pond, an equal protection challenge to a municipality’s denial of a rezoning application for a student housing development, among others
• Negotiated settlements to resolve land use litigation, including enforcement of an agreement involving a mixed-use downtown development, among others
• Retained as an expert witness in multiple cases involving the interpretation of development agreements