Monday Profile- Kelly Flint

A graduate of the University of Notre Dame and DePaul College of Law, Kelly Flint has been practicing law since 1992. She is a former assistant attorney general for the state of Connecticut and was a domestic relations referee for Jackson County Friend of the Court before 2006, when she became a staff attorney with the University of Michigan's Student Legal Services Office. Flint, who has lived in Michigan since 2002, has been married for 29 years to Bill Cerveny, a software and quality assurance engineer. They have four children ranging in age from 24 to 11. The youngest three are adopted. By Jo Mathis Legal News Residence: Dexter Township. Currently reading... mostly online news, but my favorite books are "The Red Tent," "Water for Elephants," "Memoirs of a Geisha," "Into the Wild," and "The Death of Vishnu." My mother always told me...If you can't say something nice, say nothing at all. What is your most treasured material possession? My wedding ring. What advice do you have for someone considering law school? Use the law as a tool to give back to the community as much as possible through pro bono efforts. If you weren't a lawyer, what would you be? News reporter, which was my profession before law school. Favorite local hangouts: Nichols Arboretum, Global Marketplace in Chelsea, TeaHaus in Kerrytown. Your proudest moment(s) as a lawyer? Winning asylum for a Serbo-Croation woman in a pro bono immigration trial that went on for three years in Chicago in the early '90s; winning an appeal in a child protection case for the state of Connecticut; being awarded the Connecticut New Leaders of the Law Civility award; being mentioned in a Harvard Law Review article based on a case I worked on; and every time a student thanks me for helping them navigate the court system. What would surprise people about your job? It is not as glamorous as depicted on television, and the pay is definitely less than people think! What's your greatest achievement? My children, and my pets, all shelter/rescues. What would you say to your 16-year-old self? You never know what tomorrow will bring, so maintain a strong sense of humor! Favorite joke: I'm not much of a joker, but when I was a kid my grandmother always got me with one about "Adam and Eve and Pinch Me Tight going over the river to see a fight...Adam and Eve drowned, who came back?" I sustained a lot of pinching from that joke! What is something most people don't know about you? I am terrible with technology. My husband nicknamed me his DEU(Defective End User). If you could have dinner with three people, living or dead, who would they be? Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Robert and John F. Kennedy and Bella Abzug (whom I had the honor of meeting at an ABA conference in Chicago in 1995). Who is your favorite character of fiction? Atticus Finch. Favorite law-related movie: "To Kill A Mockingbird," "The Paper Chase," "The Lincoln Lawyer" and "A Time to Kill." Favorite place to spend money: Farmer's Market. Where would you like to be when you're 90? I don't expect to live that long, but if I do, at a lakefront cottage with my husband and pets. Published: Mon, Jul 22, 2013

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