To rest of the world, lawyers aren’t always the most popular people. In simple terms, they’re lightning rods for controversy.
Then there’s Geoffrey Fieger.
Unabashed, the Southfield attorney has defined the best and worst of law - depending on which side of an issue is being argued.
A career that hit the limelight with his winning defense of Jack Kevorkian on assisted suicide charges, Fieger became more notorious when he challenged Gov. John Engler in 1998, said Bill Ballenger, editor and publisher of Inside Michigan Politics.
“When he ran for governor, a lot of other aspects of his personality were scrutinized,” Ballenger said. “They somewhat exacerbated people’s feelings about him.”
Saturday, Fieger will try to inspire a new generation of lawyers to follow in his footsteps when he speaks to more than 225 graduates of MSU-Detroit College of Law at Wharton Center.
Fieger said he plans to talk about the need for lawyers to be patriots, defending constitutional freedoms against the government’s efforts to fight terrorism.
“Most people, irrespective of the Constitution, are willing to give up freedoms for security, and that’s how they are always eroded,” he said.
“This is certainly as equally as concerning as the attempts during McCarthy’s time to make a requirement for the loyalty oath and search for a communist behind every tree.”
Fieger, a 1979 DCL graduate, called the government’s recent expansion of FBI investigation rules, changes in search and seizure guidelines, and an eroded attorney-client privilege disproportionate to the threat.
He said there’s a need for lawyers to defend these principles as well as cases such as American Taliban John Walker Lindh’s - even though they’re often unpopular.
“We’re defending constitutional principles that are more important than the individual,” Fieger said. “Unfortunately, people associate lawyers with the unpopular aspect.”
DCL President Clifton Haley said that’s the kind of attitude important to have in a trial attorney.
“Whenever you have a passionate advocate, you’re going to have people who disagree,” Haley said.
“We are a country of a rule-of-law-inspired principles. Geoffrey Fieger defends people in court under our rule of law.”
Fieger also made a $4 million gift to the law school - the largest in school history - to create the Geoffrey Fieger Trial Practice Institute, which school officials say will put DCL in the top ranks of U.S. law schools.
The highly selective institute aims to give law students trial practice in a real-world setting.
“We expect to be graduating the best-trained trial attorneys in the country,” DCL Dean Terence Blackburn said. “He’s enabled us to put together a program better than any other in the country.”
The law school, which became affiliated with MSU in 1995 and moved from Detroit to campus in 1997, has already had success helping students get jobs after they graduate, he said.
A survey of June 2001 graduates taken nine months after commencement found 92 percent had employment, which is above the national average, Blackburn said.
“We have been doing well, but in the last several years we’ve been doing extremely well,” he said.
Unlike MSU’s undergraduate commencement, which included a keynote speech by Vice President Dick Cheney, Saturday’s DCL graduation does not require tickets. Blackburn said the ceremony, which begins at noon, is more personalized than MSU’s undergraduate ceremony.
Each student will be identified by name and will be introduced with a brief description of their achievements at DCL.
This is the second year Blackburn has presided over commencement ceremonies. The former Seton Hall University law professor became dean in July 2000.
“Now I’m starting to see students who I know better,” he said. “It’s bittersweet. It’s like letting a child grow up.
“You never want to see them go, but you know you have to.”
Jeremy W. Steele can be reached at steelej7@msu.edu.
