By Tom Kirvan
Legal News
Keefe Brooks, the new president of the Oakland County Bar Association, and the OCBA itself made a bit of history June 4 at the organization’s Annual Meeting.
The event, originally scheduled for the Community House in Birmingham, took place in the virtual realm for the first time due to the coronavirus pandemic.
“Let’s just say that it was unlike annual meetings of the past,” Brooks said of the Zoom broadcast that attracted upward of 150 registrants. “It was strange to say the least to be staring into my laptop and to be delivering remarks to all the participants. But all things considered, it went fine.”
The meeting, which traditionally draws a sellout crowd of more than 300 members of the bench and bar, also was to serve as an awards ceremony for a host of OCBA honorees, including a distinguished list of 40-year pin recipients.
Brooks, fittingly, was among the 40-year honorees who were scheduled to step into the spotlight that night. But that will have to wait until Oct. 22, when hopefully large public gatherings will return to form.
“We’re certainly hopeful that it will be safe to hold the awards ceremony that evening at the Community House, but that will depend on the state of the pandemic,” said Brooks, the founding member of Brooks Wilkins Sharkey & Turco, a business litigation firm based in Birmingham.
Brooks, a magna cum laude graduate of the University of Michigan Law School, succeeds Dan Quick, another U-M Law alum, as president of the OCBA.
He will be joined in the OCBA leadership ranks for 2020-21 by President-elect Kaveh Kashef, Vice President Elizabeth Luckenbach, Treasurer Melinda Deel and Secretary Dean Googasian.
A member of the OCBA board since 2011, Brooks was the recipient of the organization’s Distinguished Service Award in 2018, when he was saluted for his years of work on behalf of various bar associations and charitable causes in the community.
As is his custom, Brooks deflected praise when it came time to accept the award.
“This (award) is backwards,” he said at the time. “I have gotten so much from the Oakland County Bar Association in terms of exposure to great practitioners and judges. I feel like my association with the OCBA has been so productive and so rewarding that I should be thanking them, not the other way around.”
In fact, Brooks believes that involvement in bar association and charitable activities is paramount for all members of the legal community. Accordingly, the younger associates in his office are expected to become actively engaged in volunteer work that benefits the community at large.
“I literally don’t give our attorneys much choice,” said Brooks, a 1972 product of North Farmington High School. “I practically insist on them being active, not in terms of just writing a check but in terms of getting involved with committees. I have a policy with young lawyers that I call ‘The Rule of Threes.’ That is, I want my young lawyers to be involved in three organizations.
“One would be some aspect of the State Bar and at the local bar level, in particular the OCBA, because that’s where we live and work. And, I want them involved in one charity in the community where they can give back.”
Such a commitment to the betterment of society was evident in Brooks’s remarks at the annual meeting.
“These are hardly ordinary times that we are experiencing,” said Brooks. “As a country and a community, we are hungry and hurting. Even prior to COVID-19, approximately 10 percent of the population in Oakland County was living at or below the poverty line. That statistic, of course, has been exacerbated by COVID-19.”
To further demonstrate a willingness to help out, Brooks announced that his firm recently made a $10,000 donation to the Lighthouse Pontiac food pantry program.
The need for such generosity was underscored later in his remarks when Brooks asked members of the OCBA to take stock of race relations in the country following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis and other senseless killings of African Americans in recent months.
“We obviously have a lot of work to do as a community and as a bar association to ensure that racial injustice is eliminated in the years ahead,” Brooks said.
Brooks is a past president and director emeritus of “The Generation of Promise Program,” a nonprofit group that gives high school students the opportunity to connect with their peers from other communities.
“The organization takes high school juniors, by application, from Detroit and suburban high schools and sponsors an event, at least once a month, where they have the chance to spend some quality time doing quality things with people who they wouldn't ordinarily meet because of our overly segregated population in Southeast Michigan,” Brooks said. “I have always had an abiding interest in dealing with remaining vestiges of racism and segregation in Detroit.
“As a student of the law, I have a pretty good understanding of how our legal system contributed mightily to that. I am a deep believer that everyone should have the opportunity to achieve their goals. That’s personal to me.”
Oakland County Circuit Judge Michael Warren, who administered the oath of office to Brooks, knows the incoming OCBA president very well.
“Keefe Brooks is a lawyer’s lawyer,” said Warren. “He is a consummate professional, hard-working, a zealous advocate and is a sterling example for the legal profession.”
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