Questions about 54B Judge Candidates: Have They Been Practicing Law?

We previously asked the 54B judge candidates, Andrea Larkin and Mark Meadows, to disclose potential competing interests and to provide their resumes. (Larkin supplied hers, but Meadows declined to provide a resume.) A couple of ELi readers asked me to follow-up on the candidates' answers with clarifying questions about to what extent Larkin and Meadows have been practicing law during the last few years. I reproduce those exchanges here. (I told the candidates their responses would be published.)

ABOUT ANDREA LARKIN:

During the primaries and since, Larkin has been dogged by claims that, because she opted to leave traditional firm work while raising children, she has not really been a practicing attorney for the last many years. I put the following questions to Larkin:

1. You say that you have been a sole practitioner since 1998. Have you had paying clients during that time?

Larkin responded, "No, I have not had any of my clients pay for my legal services since 1998. While I have provided legal services, my focus since departing from Dickinson Wright has been raising my children, a decision which was difficult but which was the right one for my family. Countless women have made this same decision and gone on to demanding careers including U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright."

2. Can you provide any documentation that you have been practicing law since 1998?

Larkin responded: "(a) I have boxes of files here at my home office; (b) there are pleadings on file in Ingham County Circuit court; (c) the July 2012 editions of the Towne Courier and Lansing State Journal contain a letter from a client who I represented before Judge Lawless in 2010; (d) there are local attorneys who can attest to the fact that I've practiced since 1998."

3. A claim has been made that you did not have an active license in 2003-2005 but later retroactively paid for those years. How do you respond?

Larkin answered, "That claim is utterly false and baseless. I possess a letter from the State Bar stating, without equivocation, that I have been an active member without interruption since November 15, 1983. The State Bar inadvertently left my name out of the Bar Journal those years.  I don't believe that the State Bar would even allow retroactive payment and I certainly have never done it nor attempted to do it."

The person who made the claim that is the subject of question #3 is a local attorney who told me that he could document his claim. I have asked him twice to provide documentation to support his claim. He did not respond to my requests. Meanwhile, Larkin supplied the documentation shown in the PDF linked above. The document is a fax from the Members department of the State Bar of Michigan and states, "Please let this note support that Atty [attorney] Larkin is a licensed active attorney with the State Bar of Michigan beginning on her license date of November 15, 1983 to the present without interruption."

ABOUT MARK MEADOWS:

Meadows campaign literature seems to suggest that he is an active member of a law firm as one of his qualifications, and yet his statement of income to ELi indicates no income from the practice of law. So I put to him the following questions:

1. Your statement of income includes no mention of income from Willingham & Cote [a law firm] or any other legal practice. But you are running on the argument that your legal practice makes you qualified to be a judge. In your HOM-TV statement, you also say: "Shareholder, Willingham & Coté, P.C.: 2002-present." Could you explain:  Do you have an income from Willingham & Cote?

Meadows answered: "If I had current income from Willingham and Cote' I would have mentioned it. When I was elected to the House of Representatives, I ceased receiving any income from Willingham and Cote'. I did not sever my membership in the firm."

2. Have you been practicing law in the last two years?

Meadows responded, "I have not appeared in court on a regular basis for 6 years. I have only appeared when asked to cover for one of the other Willingham and Cote' attorneys. I would guess that would be three or four times. When I was elected to the House of Representatives,  I transfered [sic] all my clients except one to other Willingham and Cote' attorneys. During my time in the House of Representatives I continued to practice law. I negotiated, I advocated, I counseled. I wrote legal analysis, I was and am a lawmaker. All of that activity is the practice of law."

I then followed up with a third question:

3. So you would say that anyone who is elected to the House of Representatives who negotiates, advocates, and is a lawmaker is practicing law?

Meadows answered, "The practice of law is defined as the application of legal principles and judgement [sic] to the circumstances or objectives of another person or entity. As a licensed attorney and with my training and experience, I continued to apply legal principles and judgment to the circumstances and objectives of the legislation I reviewed, commented on, advocated for or against and advised my constituency on during my legislative tenure. I am not saying that every legislator does this. I would very much doubt that non-lawyer legislators have the training and experience to approach legislation in the above manner and would expect them to rely on advice from the attorneys that we employ at the Legislative Service Bureau."

Next, we'll be asking the judge candidates about their records with regard to charges of ethics violations.

Note: I wish to again disclose here that during the primaries, I made a campaign contribution to Andrea Larkin and wrote an essay for Public Response as to why I think Mark Meadows would make a poor choice for judge.