A Confident Air Attorney Still Rises to The Challenge After Years In the Government Arena
Attorney Lynn McDougal leaned back in his office chair and locked his fingers behind his head. His aged face relaxed as he described the job of a city attorney. He had the confident look of a man who knew exactly what he was talking about. “Your readers probably don’t want to hear this, but it’s a lot harder to run a government than it is a business,” he began. “There are five domains that you have to pay attention to: one of them is the city council; another is the voters; another is the city management; another is the city employees; and another one is the customers of the city. “It takes some skill for a person dealing for the city or for an elected official of the city or the management of the city to keep that in focus.” McDougal is the managing partner of McDougal, Love, Eckis, Smith & Boehmer. His law firm’s attorneys represent the cities of El Cajon, Poway, La Mesa, Encinitas, Del Mar, Imperial Beach, and a host of other municipalities such as the Riverview Water District in Lakeside and the San Diego Unified Port District. He was El Cajon’s city attorney for 32 years until he “retired” June 30. Now the 68-year-old manages the firm and represents Imperial Beach. “About the only thing I worry about now is waking up one day and having nothing to worry about,” he said.
Retirement Plans
McDougal doesn’t go into great detail about his retirement plans. Maybe travel in his RV or digitize home movies his mother made when he was growing up, he said. Likewise, he doesn’t talk a lot about his weekends. He and his wife, Anne, have Chargers and Padres season tickets, and they have five grandchildren, he said. McDougal ends most questions about his life outside the office with “I don’t know.” And it doesn’t really matter that all McDougal talks about is his profession. It rarely does when you’re an institution.
“I think he’s great,” said El Cajon Mayor Mark Lewis. “He’s been one of the pillars of the city of El Cajon for many years.” McDougal is a past president of the El Cajon Chamber of Commerce and the League of California Cities’ City Attorneys Department, and he was a board member for the league.
Founded Associations
He also founded the San Diego and Imperial County Attorneys Association in 1975. He created the association, he said, to talk about relevant issues with other city attorneys. At an early age McDougal learned to never let an opportunity pass unchecked. He was born and raised in Atwood, Kan., a small wheat farming community in the northwest corner of the state. “Everybody lived and died on how much it rained and what the wheat crop is and whether you got hailed out just before you got your crop in,” he said.The son of a bowling alley owner and a teacher and the oldest of five children, McDougal lived a public life from the outset.
Small Town Experiences
“In a town of about 2,000, well, you had about 1,800 police officers because everybody knew you. If you did anything wrong your folks knew it before you got home.” It was definitely a town of personal responsibility, he said. McDougal attended the University of Kansas on a Navy ROTC scholarship, receiving $50 a month and an officer’s commission in return for three years of active duty service. During his college summers, Midshipman McDougal traveled to England, Scotland, Portugal, Cuba, Brazil, Argentina and Panama aboard Navy ships. After graduating in 1954, McDougal enrolled in law school at the University of Colorado. With one full year under his belt, he was called into active duty.
Honorable Discharge
McDougal’s first active duty assignment, as well as his first on the West Coast, was aboard a San Diego-based ship. After three years as a naval supply officer, McDougal was honorably discharged from service.
He then went back to Colorado and finished his law degree. But like other residents, once McDougal lived in San Diego he “couldn’t live anywhere else.” By now, McDougal had a family to support. His first local civilian job was as an insurance adjuster for Farmer’s Insurance. “They had a program where you agreed to stay with them for a year and a half or two years and they would pay for the Bar,” he said. McDougal passed the California Bar in 1960, was sworn in as a lawyer in 1961, worked in a Lemon Grove general practice firm for a year and in 1962 took a job with the El Cajon firm of Rupert Linley and Thomas Duffy.
Inherited Title
Duffy was El Cajon’s city attorney and McDougal was assistant city attorney. When Duffy was elected to the bench in 1968, McDougal inherited the city attorney’s post.
The Linley and Duffy firm had represented El Cajon since 1955. It wasn’t a particularly difficult job; there were only 33,000 residents at the time, McDougal said. “Most of these little cities would pick a local attorney that had a good reputation, that stayed sober most of the time and would stay awake during their meetings,” he said. It was during these council meetings that McDougal developed an affection for municipal litigation. It was the pure challenge of the job that appealed to him, despite the enormous public scrutiny of a government lawyer. “Everything you do involves a lot of money and everything you’re doing is public,” he said.
Specialist For Decades
McDougal estimates that for the last 20 years he has specialized in municipal law and governmental litigation. Tom Duffy, McDougal’s predecessor and the man that hired him, said municipal law is inherently different from other forms of law, but noted that all areas of practice are different. “You have to be more of a diplomat than an advocate because you’re dealing with elected officials and the general public,” said Duffy a retired Superior Court judge. The firm had four employees when Duffy hired McDougal; now it has 25. McDougal boasts his firm has pumped more than $1 million into the local economy each of the last 25 years with its payroll. Currently, the firm has well over 1,000 clients and the partners specialize in every area but criminal defense and securities. Back in McDougal’s El Cajon office, dark oak frames outlining college degrees and bar certifications hang on the wall behind him, to his right and in front of him. They are hung beside wooden plaques with shining metal faces and three-dimensional gavels. They are grouped in three distinct clusters, hung in the center of each of the three walls. Hung together, they would easily cover one wall.
Honors Litter The Office
The fourth barrier between McDougal’s office and the outside world is glass. It has a couch in front of it and that couch is littered with at least a half a dozen decrees. They’re from the city of El Cajon, the county of San Diego and beyond and they all commemorate Lynn McDougal. It would be correct to say McDougal simply enjoys the challenge of being a city attorney; including the scrutiny. McDougal admits he knew his job was up for review at every council meeting, and that it only took three votes for his termination. Yet, he survived 1,800 council meetings in El Cajon before leaving. “The key thing to keeping your job as a city attorney is probably that whomever you talk to in your position, talk to them as if he or she were a member of the City Council,” he said. “That’ll save you a lot of problems.”
