Digging into a varied career

Annie Willis poses on the campus of Lincoln University where she serves as a university attorney.
Annie Willis poses on the campus of Lincoln University where she serves as a university attorney.

From digging up 1904 World's Fair artifacts to baking miniature pastries to defending public entities in the courtroom, Annie Willis always has been driven by precision, fairness and thinking outside the box.

The local Renaissance woman came to Jefferson City in 1998 as a pastry chef at the Jefferson City Country Club. But today, she is in-house lawyer at Lincoln University.

Her first love, however, was archaeology, a pursuit she found at the age of 5 after travels and history books introduced her to the mysteries and the digging, she said.

Less than 10 years later, she was taking university classes and participating in week-long dig projects in the St. Louis area.

"Archaeology has so many levels, from the visceral enjoyment of finding something in the dirt, whether an object or a shadow of town, to the intellectual study of what people did in the past," she said.

Two years into her archaeology degree, however, she discovered few jobs awaited her. So instead she earned an English education degree.

In the last year, Willis has resumed her interest in archaeology, joining the local Missouri Archaeological Society chapter. She hopes the chapter will help get more people interested in local history and archaeology.

"So many times, people don't know what's under their own feet," she said.

When she couldn't find a job teaching after graduating from college, she took the only remaining available summer job as a pastry chef at the Lodge of the Four Seasons in Lake Ozark.

Her friends and family laughed at the idea, she recalled.

"The night before, I asked, 'What does it mean to separate an egg?'" Willis said.

She found she loved the job, staying at the facility for seven years before going out on her own. Unfortunately, arthritis in her shoulders forced her to find a new career path - again.

In 2007, she entered the University of Missouri law school.

"Pastry and law are very similar," Willis said.

Where a chef might tweak a recipe with a little more or less of an ingredient as she is inspired on a given day, cakes require exact measurements and following the rules, she explained.

The thought process is similar with the law.

"If you don't follow the civil procedure rules, you can run into problems," she said.

Since 2011, she has worked in the Missouri Law Center with Kent Brown. As of last week, she is Lincoln's interim general counsel, but she has been working with the university for seven years.

"I really enjoy public entity defense," she said. "They are legally interesting cases and challenging."

One of the first cases she worked on has been one of the most challenging. The Fourth Amendment challenge by students at State Technical College of Missouri in Linn against the school's drug-testing policy may find its way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

"Whatever your opinion is, it's interesting to be in the middle of those discussions," Willis said.

Willis said she enjoys the diversity that comes with public entity law. And a university presents a variety of legal issues, similar to a city - including employment, slip-and-falls, utilities and federal regulations.

She also volunteers her legal services through the Samaritan Center, helping provide free divorces for difficult situations.

"Lawyers see people on their worst day, most of the time," Willis said. "The expressions on those people's faces when that weight is lifted - there's nothing like that."