State Bar of Michigan members will gather in Lansing this week to honor the best in the legal profession.
Eleven major awards will be presented during a special banquet on Wednesday in conjunction with the SBM Annual Meeting, which will feature an address from Gov. Rick Snyder. The annual meeting runs through Friday.
ROBERTS P. HUDSON AWARD
Kurt E. Schnelz
Kurt E. Schnelz has been deeply involved in State Bar work for more than 20 years and has held just about every position one can hold.
Schnelz’s father, retired Oakland County Circuit Court Judge Gene Schnelz, blazed the path to bar service for his son.
“It’s a family tradition,” Schnelz said. “To be a professional means you give back. There was never a second guess.”
He credits his father’s example for that, noting that his dad won the Hudson award in 1994, making them the first father-son combo to win the award.
He also credits the friends he’s made at the State Bar, including current State Bar President Bruce Courtade.
Courtade said Schnelz has been a key player on hundreds of issues over the years and “was an integral part of several executive committees ... and always offered solid, sound input on issues before the board.”
FRANK J. KELLEY DISTINGUISHED PUBLIC SERVICE AWARD
Retired Midland County Probate Court
Judge Donna T. Morris
According to nominators Julia Close and Joseph Sepsey, Morris has “worked to avoid attention and notoriety and instead spent her career on the bench committed to helping those most in need – she is a friend of the forgotten, the lonely, and the needy.”
For more than 12 years Morris headed up efforts to plan, raise funds, construct and operate the Midland County Juvenile Care Center as part of Midland County Probate Court.
She also worked with the Michigan legislature to update the Michigan Mental Health Code, allowing for judges to travel to hospitals to hear competency hearings.
Meanwhile, Morris established the Dorothy Dow Arbury Pinecrest Endowment Fund for the operation of Pinecrest Farms, a facility that provides assisted living care to elderly, mentally ill and developmentally delayed people.
CHAMPION OF JUSTICE AWARD
Eugene Driker
“When many other individuals Gene’s age have decided to ‘slow down’ or cut back, he instead moves forward with new tasks and new responsibilities,” wrote Jules Olsman in his nomination of Eugene Driker, 76.
Among those tasks and responsibilities is chairing U.S. Sen Carl Levin’s Federal Judicial Selection Committee, which he has done for 35 years.
He is also passionate about his college and law school alma mater, Wayne State University, where he has served on the board of governors for over 10 years, including a stint as chair from 2007-08.
Prof. Robert Sedler, winner of last year’s John W. Reed Michigan Lawyer Legacy Award, commended Driker for his exemplary work as chair of the Wayne State Law School Campaign for the 21st Century, which raised more than $15 million for the school and resulted in a major expansion of the building.
Michele L. Halloran
Michele L. Halloran has served on the Michigan State University Curriculum Committee, University Steering Committee, Faculty Senate, University Council and as faculty coach for MSU teams that took first place in the American Bar Association Student Tax Challenge competitions.
She has served as a founding member and first president of the Michigan Women’s Tax Association, on the Michigan Department of Transportation’s Business Tax Advisory Group, East Lansing Children’s Film Festival board of directors, and on the Advent House Ministries board of directors.
But it is how she approaches her day job, as director of clinical programs at MSU College of Law, where she truly excels, according to those who nominated her.
When Halloran stepped into this role in 2000, she oversaw two clinics. She has since expanded them to eight, dealing with immigration, civil rights, pleas and sentencing, small business/non-profits, chance at childhood, first amendment, housing, and low-income tax payer law.
Valerie R. Newman
As an assistant defender with the State Appellate Defender Office and Criminal Defense Resource Center and an adjunct professor at the University of Michigan Law School, Valerie R. Newman to improve the system, and lately has been getting big results for her efforts.
She argued Lafler v. Cooper at the Supreme Court of the United States, and the justices ruled 5-4 in her client’s favor last March.
The New York Times reported that the decision is the most important criminal justice decision since Gideon v. Wainwright.
Newman also was part of the defense team that worked to overturn the conviction of the Highers brothers, two brothers who had each already served 25 years in prison for a murder they adamantly maintain they did not commit.
Newman has served for years as co-chair of the SBM Eyewitness Identification Task Force, co-chair of the SBM Criminal Issues Initiative, a member of the SBM Committee on Justice Initiatives, and president of the Michigan Chapter of American Constitution Society.
She also created the Culinary Challenge, an event that raises money to support Alternatives for Girls, Crossroads for Youth, and the Women Lawyers Foundation Scholarship Fund.
Ann L. Routt
Ann L. Routt is deputy director of Legal Services of South Central Michigan—Ann Arbor. During her nearly three decades with LSSCM, it has grown from an organization serving four countries to one covering 13 counties and overseeing five statewide programs: The Michigan Immigrant Rights Center, the Michigan Poverty Law Program, Farmworker Legal Services, Michigan Law Help, and the Michigan Elder Justice Initiative.
In her tenure with Legal Services of South Central Michigan, Routt has represented more than 1,200 clients, specializing in cases dealing with third-party custody, termination of parental rights, and domestic violence cases.
A. Kay Stanfield Spinks
Not long after Annette Kay Stanfield Spinks earned her law degree from the University of Michigan, she became the first female attorney at the Southeastern Michigan Transportation Authority, rising to senior assistant general counsel.
She was the first African American female jurist in Oakland County — she was appointed a 46th District Court magistrate in 1987 and held the position for 23 years while maintaining a private practice.
In 1990, Stanfield co-founded the D. Augustus Straker Bar Association and served as its first female president. She was also the first president of the D. Augustus Straker Bar Foundation and spearheaded its law school scholarship fund.
She also worked with the Straker Bar, the Wolverine Bar Association, and the Association of Black Judges of Michigan to co-create the Martin Luther King Jr. Drum Majors for Justice Advocacy Competition, which awards scholarships to Michigan high-school students. The competition has since adopted by the National Bar Association and expanded across the country.
Annette Kay Stanfield Spinks died last December, succumbing to cancer on her 60th birthday.
The scholarship program she helped create was renamed the Kay Stanfield Spinks Law Student Scholarship in her honor.
JOHN W. REED MICHIGAN LAWYER LEGACY AWARD
Professor James J. White
Everyone who took Professor James (J.J.) White’s Commercial Transactions class at the University of Michigan Law School can say he “wrote the book” on the UCC.
And for those who didn’t have White, or haven’t heard of him, it’s still highly likely he influenced their law school career.
That’s because White really did write the book on commercial law.
His “Handbook of the Law Under the Uniform Commercial Code,” co-authored with Cornell Law Professor Robert Summers, remains the leading treatise on the UCC, not to mention the best selling handbook of all time.
Veteran lawyer and commercial law professor Barkley Clark who, along with his wife, co-authored two commercial law treatises, called White “the standard by which all commercial law educators are measured.”
JOHN W. CUMMISKEY PRO BONO AWARD
Robert G. Mossel
Robert G. Mossel, Ford Motor Co.’s pro bono chairman, spearheaded an effort to refocus the program to better address community needs and determine how the corporation’s 85 in-house attorneys could use their skills to have the greatest impact on the state.
Ford attorneys are now involved in a number of legal programs ranging from food-stamp clinics and criminal expungements to nonprofit assistance and veterans’ benefits projects.
Mossel was instrumental in Ford and the Legal Aid and Defender Association collaborating on a pilot project to help individuals and families not receiving food stamps or not getting the maximum allowable benefit despite being eligible.
To date, Legal Aid estimates clients have received $180,000 in food-stamp benefits they otherwise would not have gotten.
Ford attorneys also volunteer to help low-income clients expunge their criminal records—many people cannot get jobs or housing because of prior criminal convictions—by providing advice on the court process and reviewing and finalizing pleadings.
Through the first six clinics, attorneys have helped approximately 200 clients.
KIMBERLY M. CAHILL BAR LEADERSHIP AWARD
Elizabeth A. Kitchen-Troop
Elizabeth Kitchen-Troop, who focuses on high-conflict divorce and custody cases, learned a few years ago that a growing number of Washtenaw County residents couldn’t afford quality legal representation.
So she asked her fellow Washtenaw County Bar Association Board members to help her figure out a way to address the issue.
The board formed an ad hoc committee to look into matter; it soon became a committee of one.
No programs of its kind existed in Michigan, so Kitchen-Troop reached out to bar associations across the country with similar initiatives, learned about their programs, and figured out the elements that would and wouldn’t work in Washtenaw County.
Her efforts led to creation of the Modest Means program, which provides legal representation at a reduced rate for individuals at or below 250 percent of the federal poverty guideline.
As Modest Means chair, Kitchen-Troop has mentored several volunteers, focusing on young attorneys or attorneys not experienced in family law.
LIBERTY BELL AWARD
Marge Palmerlee
Twenty years ago, Marge Palmerlee and her then 13-year-old son volunteered to help out at Degage Ministries in Grand Rapids, a facility that serves the homeless, unemployed, mentally ill, and physically disabled.
A few years later, she was hired as their executive director. At the time, Degage had four employees and served coffee every evening to about 50 people.
“We started meeting with people and asking them how we could help them in their journeys,” Palmerlee said. “We listened to their most pressing needs and we acted.”
They added a laundromat, a hair salon, showers and other programs, and they expanded their dining room and started a state ID program.
They also added Open Door, an overnight center for women who need a safe haven.
Since its inception in 2003, the center has served more than 2,000 women.
As for Degage, the ministry now serves about 500 people per day.
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