About William
William Gynan is an attorney who has moved between courtrooms, classrooms and creative studios. He trained as a lawyer but has spent much of his career balancing practice, contract work and artistic pursuits. The result is a resume that mixes large firm finance work, litigation contracts and later roles in education and the arts.
Gynan received his undergraduate degree in English and American Literature and Environmental Studies from Brandeis University, earning a B.A. in 2004. He went on to the University of Southern California Gould School of Law, where he completed his J.D. in 2008. While at USC he participated in the Post-Conviction Justice Project, an experience that exposed him to criminal justice remediation work early in his legal training.
After law school he joined Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP as a global finance associate in 2008. He then worked as a long-term litigation contract lawyer at King, Cheng & Miller LLP in 2009 and served as an associate for Jerome S. Cohen in 2010. By 2013 he was an associate at Catanese & Wells, A Law Corporation. Those years provided varied exposure to finance matters, litigation and firm practice routines.
Around the middle of the last decade Gynan shifted some of his attention to freelance creative work. He worked as a photographer beginning in 2014 and later listed himself as a musician and sound designer in 2015. These projects ran alongside consulting and contract legal work. The combination is unusual but not disconnected: both legal files and creative productions require careful editing, attention to detail and project management.
In 2020 Gynan added law teaching to his résumé as an adjunct faculty instructor at The Santa Barbara & Ventura Colleges of Law. Students say adjuncts often bring practical perspective, and his background includes experience at both large firms and on contract litigation teams. His career touches on transactional finance, litigation support and post-conviction matters from his earlier clinic work.
Gynan’s professional path has been eclectic by design. He has moved between private practice, contract roles, creative entrepreneurship and teaching. That movement has given him a range of practical skills rather than a single niche. He currently focuses on law school instruction and creative work in music and photography.
