Nancy Wonch, Professor

Biography

Nancy Wonch Professor A.A. Northwestern Michigan College 1969 B.A. Eastern Michigan University 1975 J.D., cum laude, Thomas M. Cooley Law School 1978 Contact by e-mail

Professor Wonch joined the Cooley faculty in 2002 and is a member of the law school's Professionalism Department.

Professor Wonch began her legal career as a legal intern for the Michigan Department of Education, Special Education Services Area. Later she became a law clerk, for Tesseris & Crown and an associate with Church, Wyble, Kritselis, Anderson & Robinson, P.C., a litigation law firm in Lansing, Mich.

In 1982, Professor Wonch and fellow attorneys Thomas Anderson and Thomas Hay began the successful law firm of Anderson and Wonch, P.C., specializing in litigation, in the areas of personal injury, Social Security, workers' compensation, domestic relations, real estate, and probate. She was certified as a specialist in civil litigation by the National Board of Trial Advocacy from 1992 through 2005.

Professor Wonch has served the legal community in many capacities. She is past president of the Women Lawyers Association of Mid-Michigan, the Ingham County Bar Association, and Legal Aid of Central Michigan. She served for six years as a member of the Attorney Discipline Board, and a member of the State Bar of Michigan Subcommittees on Professional and Judicial Ethics, for seven years, two years as chair.

She is also a former member of the Ingham County Friend of the Court Advisory Committee, and the State Court Administrator's Office Court Improvement Program. She has been a tort mediation panelist in Ingham and Eaton counties for 25 years and is an approved civil and domestic relations mediator for Ingham County. Since 1994, Professor Wonch has volunteered in the Lansing schools to teach over 2,000 school students of all ages mediation and negotiation skills.

Professor Wonch is the president of the board of Advent House Ministries, serving the homeless community. She is also the president of the Lansing Educational Advancement Foundation. Previously she was the chairperson of the Lansing School District Citizen Bond Forum, in 2003, co-chaired the first successful school bond campaign in Lansing in 15 years, and she served as a commissioner for the Lansing Board of Water and Light for five years.

She has received numerous awards and honors including 1997 Lawyer of the Year by the Michigan Lawyers Weekly, the 1998 Champion of Justice Award by the State Bar of Michigan, the 1998 Resolution Tribute by the Ingham County Bar Association, a 1999 Hall of Fame designation from the Ingham County Bar Association, the East Lansing Rotary Vocational Service Award in 2001, the Friend of Education Award from the Delta Kappa Gamma Sorority in 2001, and the 2002 Leo Farhat Outstanding Lawyer of the Year Award from the Ingham County Bar Association, a three-month 2010 Rotary World Peace Fellowship studying peace and conflict resolution in Bangkok Thailand, and the 2010 Crystal Apple Award for excellence in education from the Michigan State University College of Education.

Bibliography

• Articles

Articles

Nancy A. Wonch, "How to Attract the Unintentional Grievance", 74 Mich. B.J. 162 (January 1995).