By Taryn Hartman
Legal News
On June 24, Laurie Michelson became the third woman in a row to inherit the president’s gavel for the Federal Bar Association’s Eastern District of Michigan chapter, following predecessors Elisa Angeli-Palizzi of Miller Canfield and current U.S. Attorney Barb McQuade. Former Pepper Hamilton managing partner Barbara Rom would’ve made it four straight if not for her retirement at the end of last year.
For a federal court system where 22 of 93 total U.S. Attorneys are women and, according to California senator Diane Feinstein during Elena Kagan’s recent Supreme Court confirmation hearings, women represent 48 of the 163 active federal appeals court judges and 191 of 794 federal district court judges, the streak of women leaders is just one of the attributes that sets the local FBA chapter apart from others around the country.
Prior to assuming the president’s job, Michelson, head of Butzel Long’s Intellectual Property, Media and Technology practice group, attended a training seminar held in Washington, D.C. for all incoming FBA chapter presidents.
“A huge part of that training is devoted to how to get the federal judges more active in the federal bar, and we don’t have that problem,” Michelson says. Local federal judges sit on the chapter’s board of directors, frequently speak at events like the recent luncheon for summer associates and law clerks held at the Levin Courthouse downtown, and hold some of their motion calls at area law schools “so the students can come and actually experience what it’s like to be a lawyer.”
“You sort of take it for granted, being here, that that’s how all the chapters are around the country, and they’re not,” Michelson says. “Here, the participation is second to none, and that makes a big difference. But to me, that’s just kind of representative of what it’s like to practice in federal courts. [Judges] give you that same time and attention to your case that they give to the Federal Bar Association.”
Michelson’s first contact with the federal court system, and also with a trailblazing legal woman, started early in her career with a clerkship for Judge Cornelia Kennedy of the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, who very nearly became the first woman Supreme Court justice in 1981 when the decision came down to Kennedy and eventual nominee Sandra Day O’Connor. The previous summer, Michelson had served as a summer associate at Butzel Long between her second and third years at Northwestern Law School. She returned to her career’s sole firm in 1993 following the clerkship.
“That was the best experience,” Michelson says of her time with Kennedy. “Before you clerk, everybody tells you, ‘You’re going to love it, she’s the best,’ and then you go into it and you finish and you’re saying the exact same things everybody told you.
“It was the perfect job for me,” she continues. “I love to research and I love to write, and that’s all the appellate court clerks do.”
As Butzel’s former recruitment chair, Michelson remains a staunch supporter of judicial clerkships and their benefits for young attorneys, only wishing her time with Kennedy had lasted longer.
“It was only one year, and it’s one of those jobs where just as you’re getting good at it, just as you can pull briefs off the shelf and know that you can write a good bench memo in no time, it’s time to go,” she says.
She became active in the local FBA as her practice shifted into more white-collar criminal defense work, over which the federal court system has primary jurisdiction, and served as a co-chair for the organization’s annual dinner for five years before starting on the leadership track.
“I’m glad my timing fell the way it did,” Michelson says of following McQuade and Angeli-Palizzi, who now serves on the FBA board as its immediate past president. “For me, it’s an added bonus to know you’ve got that kind of a resource who’s still a member of the officer ranks. We all get along, but there is something special about the sisterhood.”
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