[3][2] Lee's father William had only a sixth grade education and circumvented the Chinese Exclusion Act by detouring through Canada to enter the U.S.[4][5] He owned a hand laundromat in the Upper West Side of Manhattan and enlisted in the United States Army Air Corps during World War II at age 35; still, he experienced racism such as taunting or being rejected for housing and jobs.

As an undergraduate at Yale, Lee majored in history and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, graduating magna cum laude in 1971.

[3] While a law student, Lee worked as a research assistant for Jack Greenberg, Thurgood Marshall's successor at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF).

He then moved to Los Angeles in 1983, where he was Supervising Attorney for Civil Rights Litigation at the Center for Law in the Public Interest until 1988.

[7][8] Lee became the highest-ranking Asian-American in the Department of Justice, where he led successful efforts to strengthen the nation's hate crime laws, improve access and opportunities for Americans with disabilities, fight against housing discrimination, and spearheaded efforts to toughen laws against human trafficking and involuntary servitude.

[3] Serving until the end of the Clinton White House despite the Senate's refusal to confirm him, Lee returned to Columbia Law School as a visiting scholar and wrote a report on international human rights for the Ford Foundation.