LEGAL NEWS PHOTO BY CYNTHIA PRICE
by Cynthia Price
Legal News
Meredith Beidler, who earned both a Distinguished Student Award and the Leadership Achievement Award for her class at Thomas M. Cooley Law School, says that involvement with her community was not always a priority.
“In my undergrad years I wasn’t really involved at all,” Beidler says of her time at Cornerstone University. “I did some activities at my dorm but after my roommate moved away I realized I didn’t really have
many other friends. Even my first term here I wasn’t involved with much of anything, but then the Christian Legal Society was formed and I started realizing the connections you can make.”
many other friends. Even my first term here I wasn’t involved with much of anything, but then the Christian Legal Society was formed and I started realizing the connections you can make.”
The Christian Legal Society is a national organization whose mission “is to inspire, encourage, and equip Christian lawyers and law students both individually and in community to proclaim, love and serve Jesus Christ through the study and practice of law, the provision of legal assistance to the poor and needy, and the defense of the inalienable rights to life and religious freedom.”
Though the organization’s emphasis is on adult chapters (there are none in the state of Michigan), it offers many resources for student campus chapters.
Beidler was elected secretary of the Christian Legal Society that first year, and later served two years as its president. During her term, the society went from not having a group meeting at all to meeting every other week with about twenty students.
“Being part of that was really helpful for me to figure out my leadership style,” Beidler comments.
She was part of a small group who attended the Christian Legal Society’s national conference in Tampa, an enjoyable experience from which she derived a lot.
Beidler was also the Grand Rapids campus Law Review comments editor. “Even from the beginning I knew I wanted to be on Law Review,” she says. “It was so time-consuming because I had about 15-20 associate editors working with me and also was on the full board.”
Time is of the essence for Beidler, because she is a mother of a four-year-old girl and the wife of a man who until recently worked three jobs. “He just dropped down to two jobs,” she says, smiling. The family lives in Holland.
In addition to her excellent academic record — she was on he Dean’s List and won the Certificate of Merit in several of her classes — Beidler was a Magistrate and, later, board member for the Grade Appeals Board, served as a Cooley Ambassador to mentor new law students, and presided over the Phi Alpha Delta law fraternity chapter.
Beidler may have inherited a public service mentality from her father, who is Senator Arlan Meekhof, but she decidedly did not get any of his desire to run for office. “No way,” she comments flatly.
Meekhof, who is the Michigan Senate Majority Floor Leader, has recently been in the news for introducing a controversial bill that would make membership in the State Bar of Michigan voluntary.
Beidler would like to stay in West Michigan as she pursues a practice in the areas of criminal defense and family law. She would prefer a place at a small firm, inspired by the excellent externship she had at the five-attorney firm Peterson Paletta, which focuses on both those areas.
Beidler also interned with Muskegon County Prosecutor D.J. Hilson. She says she originally thought about being a prosecutor, but “in the criminal defense and family law area there’s so much more you can do.”
She is drawn to family law in part because of positive experiences with adoptions, especially pertinent to her life since a large percentage of her relatives are adopted.
But once she clears the hurdle of the bar exam at the end of February — she continues to take a bar preparation class at Cooley — Beidler says she is open to doing “anything in the beginning, anywhere I can put my license to work helping people.”
She adds, “Cornerstone was an excellent experience, but I was the last pre-law student at the school, so I was kind of alone. But when I came here I felt at home. I love Cooley. I love the atmosphere and the professors, everything.”
In turn, Cooley Associate Dean Nelson Miller is unstinting in his praise for Beidler. “Meredith made a remarkable time for herself in law school. Law school is what you make it to be, rich in opportunities for every student but opportunities that students must see and seize. Meredith saw many worthwhile goals and pursued and achieved every one of them,” he states. “Students do not gain the leadership positions and recognition that Meredith gained without thought, commitment, dedication, and perseverance. Meredith exhibited all of those special traits to the fullest extent.”
Miller adds that, due to the characters and principles Beidler derives from her strong faith, “Meredith will make her mark on the profession's conscience, and the profession will be better for having received that mark.”
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