He practiced law in Troy, New York, but convinced his boyhood friend Charles Reed Bishop to travel with him to the Oregon Territory in February 1846 on the ship Henry.

[3] Ricord convinced Lee to stay, and Bishop was given the job of sorting out the defunct Ladd & Co. which was also the center of a long-lasting legal dispute.

A related land dispute by Richard Charlton had caused a British military occupation a few years earlier called the Paulet Affair which was still being sorted out.

[4] On December 1, 1846, he was appointed judge of the island of Oʻahu, and served on the Privy Council of King Kamehameha III for the rest of his life.

[5] Starting in 1847 he became a member of a commission to quiet land titles that led to legislation known as the Great Mahele which formalized fee simple ownership of real estate.

On August 28 Lee and chief government minister Gerrit P. Judd went aboard the French ship for an attempted peace conference.

Former Scottish physician, now Foreign Minister Robert Crichton Wyllie agreed, and former Hawaiian newspaper publisher James Jackson Jarves negotiated a treaty with John M. Clayton signed on December 20, 1849.

On January 15, 1855, Lee was named chancellor, and in March 1855 to 1856 served as an envoy to the United States where he traveled for medical advice.

His widow Catherine Newton traveled back to New York and in 1861 married Edward L. Youmans, the founder of Popular Science.