Julie Gutman Dickinson Joins Bush Gottlieb As A Partner

Feb 12, 2013

Julie Gutman Dickinson, former Vice President of the Los Angeles Board of Public Works and Senior Labor Advisor to Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, joined the Bush Gottlieb law firm as a partner this week.

Ms. Gutman Dickinson served for more than a decade as a trial attorney at the National Labor Relations Board in Los Angeles, where she vigorously advocated for worker and immigrant rights. She was the only lawyer to achieve a 100 percent win record in voluminous unfair labor practices trials and federal district court litigation, including injunctions against the mass discharge of low-income and immigrant workers.

“We are thrilled to welcome Julie to our team,” said longtime partner Robert A Bush. “She is one of L.A.’s  most effective and passionate advocates for organized labor and the rights of working men and women. I know that she will serve clients with great distinction.”

Ms. Gutman Dickinson, who most recently served as Executive Director of the internationally recognized human rights organization, the Program for Torture Victims, brings to the firm extensive experience advocating for public and private sector unions .

“I am thrilled to join one of the nation’s most respected union-side law firms,” said Ms. Gutman Dickinson. “At a time when the most basic rights of workers are under fierce assault, there is no place I would rather be.”

During her tenure as a mayoral advisor and a Board of Public Works Commissioner, Ms. Gutman Dickinson worked successfully to promote good jobs, workforce development programs and labor harmony. She spearheaded legal, legislative and administrative strategies to successfully strengthen and promote Los Angeles’ prevailing wage, living wage and apprenticeship compliance programs, making them the model for the state. She also negotiated mutually beneficial labor-management agreements for a myriad of private and public sector unionized workforces, averting or settling strikes and lifting wages and benefits for workers and their families.

Ms. Gutman Dickinson also served as an adjunct faculty member at Stanford Law School, clerked for U.S. District Court Judge Stanley Weigel, and was awarded an American Bar Association fellowship. Fluent  in Spanish, she has led immigrant and organizing rights workshops and has been a featured speaker at numerous law schools and labor law conferences. She has also authored several articles regarding the National Labor Relations Act, has served as chapter editor for the American Bar Association’s treatise, The Developing Labor Law, and has been a member of the ABA Committee for the Development of the Law Under the National Labor Relations Act.

In July 2010, Ms. Gutman Dickinson received the “Labor Hero” award at the Los Angeles Orange County Organizing Committee’s Joe Hill Awards Gala, one of the labor movement’s premier events in Southern California. She currently serves on the Labor & Employment Executive Committee of the Los Angeles County Bar Association, the Advisory Board of the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy,  the AFL-CIO Lawyers Coordinating Committee, and the Board of the Program for Torture Victims.

Born and raised in Chicago, Ms. Gutman Dickinson graduated  Phi Beta Kappa and Magna Cum Laude with bachelor’s degrees in history and law & society from Brown University. She received her JD from Stanford Law School.