by Cynthia Price
Legal News
Susan Wilson Keener, new President of the Grand Rapids Bar Association, believes her colleagues are outstandingly civil and respectful of each other.
Keener wants to spend her leadership year making sure it stays that way.
She feels in order to do that, a number of what she calls “stressors” in the environment must be overcome. Chief among them is the challenging economy faced by the state and almost everyone in it, with the possibility that competitive situations may result in less thoughtful behaviors. This also may result in a trend for more law school graduates to go into solo practice, because the economy is limiting large-firm hiring.
Keener also senses a slight directional change in our society towards less-civil interactions, exemplified by negative attack political ads as one instance. In fact, she sees less face-to-face interaction altogether, based on the increase in electronic communication, particularly among younger people.
That is why the executive committee of the bar is in the formative stages of developing a mentoring program (or programs) that will pair experienced attorneys with new incoming lawyers.
Though the board is only now working through the possibilities, Keener is particularly concerned that recent graduates going into solo practice have the opportunity to benefit from the knowledge of attorneys who have faced some of the same challenges. She feels the older attorneys can give valuable advice not only on nuts-and-bolts matters but also on the rich Grand Rapids Bar tradition of civility, professionalism and high ethics.
She hopes the mentoring program will be able to merge the best of both worlds: the expertise of those long in practice leveraging the efficiency of technological savvy on the part of younger attorneys. She feels the entire bar needs to strive to remain relevant to new young lawyers.
Both the urge to help others and the emphasis on civil and respectful interactions seem to run in Keener’s blood.
Keener graduated cum laude from Indiana University School of Law. She started her 26-year law career at Miller Johnson in litigation, but quickly moved into family law because she was “always drawn to problem-solving for people” over adversarial advocacy. She started her own firm, Keener Law Offices PLC, in 2005.
Her time at the larger law firm exposed her to the benefits of a good mentoring program, so she is glad she had that head-start. In fact, she found the whole Miller Johnson experience “rewarding,” but discovered that the practice of family law felt like coming home.
She enjoys — and is good at — working directly with individuals, helping them reach agreement as opposed to confrontational victories. She focuses on helping clients think through their situation, weigh their options, and “pick and choose their battles.”
This eventually led her to include mediation in her practice, helping parties to a divorce or custody dispute maintain mutual respect and reasonable interaction so that the best interests of everyone, especially their children, might be served.
“Mediation for me was a really mind-opening experience – giving people skills to help them to go forward with their lives in a positive way. Even beyond family disputes, I think it’s better for all human beings to learn how to move forward, not focus on blame and punishment — to be able to say, ‘OK, why did we have these problems, how can we do better?’” Keener was chair of the ADR Section of the Grand Rapids Bar right before starting her presidency.
Further along that spectrum, Keener has participated in Collaborative Divorce Training. Collaborative family law involves the use of professionals in a variety of disciplines, particularly psychology and counseling, to help clients feel as if their most important human issues have been addressed, rather than just a hollow victory in the courts.
Keener says that collaborative family practice has grown in West Michigan so that the region now has the largest number of collaborative practice attorneys in the state. Along with local attorneys Randy Velzen and Deborah Berecz, Keener is a trainer for the state of Michigan.
Keener is a founding member of the Collaborative Divorce Professionals of West Michigan, many of whose members are well-known local family law attorneys, and she belongs to the Collaborative Practice Institute of Michigan as well as
the International Academy of Collaborative Professionals.
She says, “If you leave a family broken and in complete conflict, how much more difficult it will be for them to transition to co-parenting when they have to.”
Given this history and this worldview, it is not surprising that as Grand Rapids Bar President, Keener would focus on maintaining civility and professionalism in the field.
“Expressing mutual respect, treating each other civilly, is most supportive to human beings transitioning thru divorce, but is also a broader theme than that – it applies to all humanity and all conflict,” she says.
Another way in which Keener feels that professionalism and respect might be expressed is through service to the Bar, at whatever level. She hopes her year in office will support lawyers, especially new lawyers, participating in the local bar.
This is her second run as an officer in the Grand Rapids Bar Association. She was the secretary in the mid-2000s for two years. Interestingly, it was the man who will precede her as president, Mark Smith of Nantz, Litowich, Smith Girard & Hamilton, who first got her interested in local bar involvement _ through a chance conversation on an elevator.
She has also served as chair of the Litigation Section of the State Bar, and has been on its Communications and Legal Milestone committees. She continues to serve on several Grand Rapids Bar committees.
For Keener, professionalism and ethics entail giving back to the community and participating in pro bono work, something she hopes will be passed along as part of the mentoring process.
She herself was given Legal Aid of Western Michigan’s 2003 Michael Barnes Award for the pro bono work she has done. She has served two terms on the board of the Legal Assistance Center, and is a volunteer mediator for the Dispute Resolution Center. She has served on the Kent County American Red Cross board, resulting in receiving its Outstanding Leadership Award, been chair of the Grand Valley State University Legal Studies Advisory Board and president of the Women Lawyers Association of Michigan Western Region. She is still an active member of Trinity United Methodist Church.
As far as other activities during her tenure as president, Keener says she feels strongly about diversity issues and believes that the board will in the very near future sign the Michigan Pledge to Achieve Diversity and Inclusion in the Legal Profession. Working with the diversity committee, she would like to continue the process of implementing diversity strategies.
“I’m only the fourth woman bar president. So I think that’s something we always need to attend to, to keep our eyes focused on supporting diversity.”
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