This oral history interview with W. Michael Gillette was conducted by Michael O’Rourke in Gillette’s office at the Schwabe, Williamson, and Wyatt law firm in Portland, Oregon, as part of the United States District Court of Oregon Oral History Project. The interview was conducted in seven sessions from May 16, 2012, to December 10, 2014; the first four sessions were recorded as digital audio files, and sessions five through seven were recorded as digital video files.

In this interview, Gillette discusses his early life in Milton-Freewater, Oregon, and talks about his college experiences at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, and at Harvard University. He discusses practicing law at the Rives and Rogers firm in Portland, working as a prosecutor for the Multnomah County district attorney’s office from 1967 to 1969, and working as assistant attorney general for American Samoa from 1969 to 1971. He then discusses his service as chief counsel of the Consumer Protection Division of the Oregon attorney general’s office from 1971 to 1973, and as solicitor general of Oregon from 1973 to 1977. He speaks at length about serving as a judge on the Oregon Court of Appeals from 1977 to 1986, and as a justice on the Oregon Supreme Court from 1986 to 2010.