By Sheila Pursglove
Legal News
With the vast majority of his immediate and extended family being real estate developers, architects and/or contractors, Giuliano Mancini grew up in real estate and construction.
Visiting active construction sites from a tender age, it has always fascinated Mancini to watch and learn how a project takes shape from bare earth to full completion.
“It excites me that there’s always something new, unexpected, and different happening day-in and day-out on a job site and equally fascinating in how a project’s value and feasibility can differ so drastically depending on elements such as location, socio-economic status of an area, or even what type of road it is located on,” he said.
When the economic downturn hit in 2008, Mancini — who previously worked at Bedrock Real Estate Services in Detroit and at Champagne Building Co. and Mancini/Ward Architectural Design and Planning in Shelby Township — saw and experienced first hand the drastic effect the downturn had on his family given its heavy involvement in real estate development.
This made him think twice about pursuing a career solely based in real estate development.
Still wanting to be involved in this field, Mancini instead chose to focus on real estate law.
“I felt the law would help me to learn and understand all aspects of real estate, give me an opportunity to work in various areas of real estate and not be limited to development, and as a lawyer offer greater job stability in most economic situations,” he said.
What finally sold Mancinion this idea was his enjoyable experience working at a large commercial real estate company, which required him to learn and understand various legal concepts in order to complete day-to-day responsibilities and tasks, such as performing due diligence for property acquisitions and reviewing contracts.
Now a 2L at Wayne State University Law School, where he serves as an assistant editor at the Wayne Law Review, Mancini chose the school for its competitive financial package, his desire to remain and practice in Detroit after graduation, and for the large and successful alumni network in the area.
“I like Wayne Law mainly for its faculty,” he said. “Every professor and staff member I’ve met and interacted with has been so incredibly kind and genuine in their care for my academic success and in their efforts to assist me with professional opportunities.”
After graduation, Mancini’s career goal is to contribute to, and be involved with, as many transformative and beneficial real estate developments in Detroit as possible.
“I hope to use my legal education to guide real estate developers to make positive impacts on the city’s physical landscape and citizens, while also advancing the developer’s own interests and development goals,” he said.
Eventually, Mancini said he hopes “to spearhead some real estate developments on my own, with a focus on forward looking urban and community planning which I hope will strengthen our community while still developing a successful project.”
He enjoyed this past summer’s internship at Altair Engineering in Troy.
“The people were fantastic,” he said. “Everyone was so eager to mentor me and assist my development of practical legal skills as well as to augment my knowledge in a commercial law setting.
“What I enjoyed the most at Altair was creating work product — including drafting software license agreement templates from scratch and editing proposed agreements from third parties — which was well regarded and actively used by the rest of the legal team. It was a great learning experience.”
Mancini, whose maternal and paternal grandparents immigrated to the U.S. in the 1960s, founded the Italian-American Law Students Association (IALSA) this past January with help from fellow Italian-American students at Wayne Law. He now serves as the fledgling organization’s president.
“Not having any attorneys in my family nor knowing many attorneys prior to starting law school, the main reason was to leverage our heritage in order to better connect with and learn from the large amount of Italian-American lawyers and judges in the Detroit area,” Mancini said.
IALSA’s other main goals are to provide an organization for Italian-American students to access and receive academic support, foster informal mentorship opportunities, or simply to ease the demands of law school for Italian-American students by being an organization they are able to comfortably identify with and can meet students of similar backgrounds.
“IALSA has hosted speaking events with local Italian-American judges, has provided information on scholarship opportunities for Italian-American students, and has partnered with other ethnic and religious affinity organizations for various events which I believe helps to showcase the diversity found within Wayne Law,” Mancini said.
In his leisure time, Mancini enjoys watching and following Michigan football, basketball, hockey and soccer, to a lesser extent, as well as following Detroit's professional teams, especially via the detroitsportsrag.net and mgoblog.com.
He also enjoys keeping up with Detroit real estate development news, going to live music bars, watching movies and playing video games.
Mancini added he has “an ongoing quest to find Detroit's best cup of coffee and Reuben sandwich.”
A soccer player from a young age, he enjoys watching the game live and holds season tickets for the Detroit City FC.
He was able to convey that passion for the game as a United States Soccer Federation State ‘D’ licensed coach at Vardar-Ann Arbor where he trained and coached youth travel soccer teams while an undergraduate at the University of Michigan.
“It was a fantastic opportunity and very enjoyable to be able to share my passion for the game and the life lessons that team sports can provide children,” he said.
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