By Sheila Pursglove
Legal News
Tammy Brown Asher followed a fascinating path both at home and abroad en route to her career as a Cooley Law School professor.
As a student at the University of Vermont – with a junior year at the University of North Wales in the U.K. – Asher changed her college major several times. The Massachusetts native then finished with degrees in medical laboratory technology and anthropology, before heading to West Africa with the Peace Corps to teach health education and do lab work at a local “hospital.”
“Niger is very poor and was suffering from a multi-year drought,” she says. “People lived in grass huts without running water, floors, or plumbing. I saw a lot of poverty, disease, and death.”
“The Peace Corps was very worthwhile, and I may do it again, when I retire. Living in a developing country makes you appreciate what we have – most Americans don’t understand how lucky they are.”
Returning stateside, Asher earned a teaching certificate and taught high-school biology for three years. Then came law school.
“I’ve always loved school and learning new things, and there were lawyers in my family,” she says. “In 1990, my cousin was accepted to law school, and my uncle asked if I would consider attending so we could be study partners. My brother, a lawyer, said he was sure I would like law school.”
Asher earned her J.D., magna cum laude, in 1993 from Cooley Law School, and was second in her class; was Casenotes Editor for the Thomas M. Cooley Law Review; and received numerous American Jurisprudence Awards, the National Association of Women Lawyers’ Outstanding Law Student Award, Distinguished Student Award, Carolyn Stell Scholarship Award, and Julia Darlo Award Asher spent seven years in private practice. At Howard & Howard in Bloomfield Hills, she was a member of the Environmental Practice Group, which served as outside national environmental counsel to Chrysler Corp. and Chrysler Realty Corp.
“H & H did all of Chrysler’s environmental work in the United States. As a result, there were many types of environmental cases,” she says.
Asher was involved in many CERCLA cases – Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, also known as Superfund – because Chrysler was linked, directly or indirectly, to several hazardous waste sites on the National Priorities List.
“We worked with other potentially responsible parties and the Department of Justice to develop short- and long-term remediation plans to significantly reduce the dangers associated with releases, or threat of releases, of hazardous substances,” she says. “Because cleanups were often costly, much time was spent determining what type of cleanup should be conducted and how much each party should pay.”
At Seyburn, Kahn, Ginn in Southfield she served as outside environmental counsel for Wayne County. Much of her work consisted of drafting Consent Agreements with corporations cited for violating air quality standards.
“Environmental laws have helped protect our country from many dangers, but there is always room for improvement. As pollutants continue to threaten our environment, laws will still be needed to provide protection to the environment and public health. We all know pollution doesn’t respect international boundaries, so international law will become an increasingly important aspect of environmental law.”
Asher joined Cooley’s full-time faculty in 2006.
“It’s my dream job because it has many facets,” she says. “I love teaching Torts I and Legal Research & Writing. Torts I is a first-term course, and most new students are scared and overwhelmed. I enjoy making that transition from college to law school smoother. I enjoy Research & Writing because class sizes are limited to 25, and I have multiple one-on-one conferences with each student, so I get to know students well. We usually keep in touch throughout law school and even after they graduate.”
As a Cooley professor she is encouraged to volunteer. In 2009, she coached a team at West Bloomfield’s Roosevelt Elementary School in the problem-solving program Odyssey of the Mind, and the team advanced to the World Finals.
This summer, in partnership with the ABA Council of Legal Education Opportunity and Oakland University, Cooley hosted the first CLEO Sophomore Summer Institute in Michigan, providing 22 days of free intensive pre-law academic instruction to low-income, minority, or otherwise disadvantaged college students. Asher taught the legal writing course.
“I work with wonderful people in a first-class, state-of-the-art facility,” she says. “I love teaching here because Cooley is among the nation’s most diverse institutions, and it has students from all 50 states and many foreign countries.”
––––––––––––––––––––
Subscribe to the Legal News!
https://legalnews.com/Home/Subscription
Full access to public notices, articles, columns, archives, statistics, calendar and more
Day Pass Only $4.95!
One-County $80/year
Three-County & Full Pass also available
