The lawyer who helped turn Lohan around
Shawn Holley performed her latest marvel when she managed to get Lindsay Lohan freed from probation.
Shawn Holley works miracles for troubled starlets, said Sandy Banks in the Los Angeles Times. Just last week, she performed her latest marvel when she managed to get Lindsay Lohan freed from probation, the culmination of a five-year courtroom drama that saw multiple lawyer and hair-color changes, and at least one vulgar message painted on a fingernail. It’s been a strange journey for Holley, a former public defender who began her legal career in dirty holding tanks interviewing crack addicts and petty thieves. Most frustrating has been watching Lohan ignore her advice and repeatedly screw up. Holley even quit once. “It took a long time for us to have a relationship of mutual trust and respect,” she says. “For the most part now, I think she listens to me. And that means a lot, it really does.” So what was it that allowed her to get through to the actress? “In a sense, it is maternal,” says Holley, who’s also raising a 9-year-old daughter. “I do feel like her protector. And I really consider it an honor to protect her.” She hopes people recognize the difficult time Lohan has had under the spotlight, and that they’ll now give her space to right her life. “Think about your own lives, your own children…the mistakes that have been made. And how much more painful and difficult it would be if there was a crowd around calling ‘off with her head.’”
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
Citizenship: Trump order blocked again
Feature After the Supreme Court restricted nationwide injunctions, a federal judge turned to a class action suit to block Trump's order to end birthright citizenship
-
Loyalty tests: The purge at the FBI
Feature Kash Patel is conducting polygraph tests on FBI agents to weed out anyone speaking badly about him
-
The all-seeing tech giant
Feature Palantir's data-mining tools are used by spies and the military. Are they now being turned on Americans?