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Welcome Message from the President
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Marianne
When I was elected to the Michigan Supreme Court in 1966, my predecessor, Otis Smith, called to request that I retain his secretary, Mary Lou Shepard. I was delighted at the recommendation. Mary Lou had been with the court for longer than Justice Smith, having previously worked for Justice North.
Mary Lou was herself a lawyer. She studied under Judge Leland Carr, an Ingham County Circuit Judge who conducted classes in his courtroom every evening. In the nineteen twenties and thirties, it was possible to take the bar examination without attending a law school.
Mary Lou was a gem, and made my transition to appellate work very smooth. When, after my term as chief justice, Mary Lou decided to retire, I knew that I would have to find a very special kind of person to take her place.
Leo Farhat was a leading Lansing lawyer, and a very good friend of mine. So was his brother Norman. They recommended that I interview their sister, Marianne, who was then a fixture at one of the major downtown firms, an organizer and past president of the Lansing Legal Secretaries Association, and a long time member of the board of that organization.
I don't know how old Marianne was at the time. Younger than I, to be sure, but still not a kid. Never married, she lived for her job and her family. She adored her nieces and nephews, spoiled them rotten, and occupied a place of reverence and awe in the Farhat family as the beloved, 'Aunt Marianne.'
When I left the court to assume the deanship at Cooley, Marianne agreed to come with me. Her contribution to our success in those early days was significant.
To say that Marianne was a big woman is to put too simple a name on it. She was clinically overweight and I always thought it was related to her personality and disposition. She was the classic workaholic. She never, and I mean never, left my office without every scrap of work assigned to her being done. And done to perfection.
She worried about me. How I was perceived. How I was regarded. What I did. Where I went. Whether I was on time. Whether I was prepared.
She may have been a closet snacker, but I don't recall ever seeing her eat at her desk. Indeed, she rarely went out for lunch, rarely ate any lunch at all. Her disposition was mercurial. She could be as sweet as honey one minute, and as biting as a dash of tabasco the next.
She could flash the smile of the angels at some disheveled young law student seeking an audience with the president. And she could snap at a member of the school's board of directors who had the audacity to call me when I was writing a speech.
Eventually, she became a problem, not because of anything she did, but because of her value as an employee. When I brought her with me to Cooley, I promised that she would not have to take a pay cut. Supreme court secretaries are well paid, and maintaining parity with them meant that Marianne was making a salary comparable to our middle managers at the school.
What to do? I resolved the matter by making her our director of admissions. She took to the job just as she had taken to her secretarial work, putting in long hours, leaving no stone unturned, no file left until tomorrow to be reviewed.
She had natural leadership ability. She was decisive. On the other had, she was not much given to compromise or conciliation. She was right, she knew she was right, and if you disagreed, you were wrong. Plain and simple.
Unfortunately, the job of director of admissions must interface with the faculty admissions committee, and with the dean. Marianne was intensely loyal to me, and expected me to be on her side whenever some point of difference with faculty members or other administrators came up. She tested my peace keeping skills more than once.
When the idea of the Legal Careers Institute was proposed by Ken Wiebeck, I immediately thought of Marianne as the logical director or dean. She was an experienced legal secretary, she knew most of the lawyers in town, she had a motherly way of taking young people under her wing, and she had very high standards of professional skills and conduct. I was sure she would encourage her charges to have a solid work ethic.
Our plan for the Institute was to place all of our students into internship positions at local law firms right from the beginning of their studies. Many lawyers and law firms were interested in the program and eager to accept our students. After all, it was free help, even if our people were novices, able to perform only the most ministerial tasks.
The program worked rather well. An initial class of about twenty students was recruited, put through a rigorous program and actually graduated. I believe that almost every one had a job when they graduated.
Two events lead to the demise of the Legal Careers Institute. One was the death of a carful of our students in a tragic auto accident.
The other was the sudden, unexpected and untimely death of Marianne Farhat.
One footnote: The Legal Careers Institute had a solitary male student. Upon graduation, he didn't have a job. I hired him to work in our admissions office at the law school. Today, more than twenty five years later, he is the deputy director of admissions at the law school. His name is Tony Alvarado.
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This Page was last updated on:
08/19/2004