This month, I had the pleasure of sitting down for a discussion with Michigan education rights attorney Elizabeth “Liz” K. Abdnour to kick off our brand new Inter Alia Interviews series.

Liz is based out of Lansing but represents clients throughout the state in education cases ranging from K-12 Special Education and Disability Rights, K-12 and College Discipline, College Disability Rights and Title IX cases, and everything in-between.

Naturally engaging and warm, you can feel Liz’s excitement when she talks about the field she loves. Her insights into the field and her reflections on her journey to get there were truly inspiring to me, and we hope they will be to you as well.

MNM: Thank you again for agreeing to do this – there are so many young lawyers who could benefit from hearing candidly from experienced attorneys.

LKA: My pleasure! Thank you for asking me.

MNM: To start us off, I think let’s do the general overview: what led you to becoming an attorney?

LKA: Well I went to undergrad at Michigan State University (MSU) and I wasn’t sure about my major. At one point I took a political theory class and I really liked it. Eventually, I had enough credits to where I had to declare a major so I picked Political Theory at MSU James Madison College.

MNM: What took you from political theory to law?

LKA: It wasn’t the typical trajectory. Ironically, I actually didn’t like my classmates in the program very much because I thought the group was very snobby. I remember this one instance where they made a class t-shirt with a class motto on it and it said: “James Madison College: Social Darwinism At Its Best”. I thought that was in poor taste. Anyway, all of that group of people seemed to be going to law school so I remember feeling like “okay, I definitely don’t want to do that”. So I graduated from MSU and got a job working in a customer service call center for a stained-glass company of all things. I  had no idea how to do any of it but I learned it. Then I worked as receptionist at a law firm for a while, I did word processing and typing for an engineering firm, just that kind of stuff.

Eventually I realized with a political theory degree and nothing else, I  would probably need to go to grad school for something, especially since I didn’t want to work for politicians. At the time that I made the decision, I was volunteering at MSU Safe Place – the first and only on-campus domestic violence shelter in the country. In the course of my time there, I loved it. At some point they did a training where a prosecutor came and presented. I remember thinking it sounded so cool. Ultimately, I decided to go to law school or maybe do grad school for social work. I took the LSAT to decide. When I got a 173 on the LSAT I was like “I’ll go to law school”.

MNM: Where did you go to law school?

LKA: I chose New York University (NYU) Law because I thought it would be fun to move to New York City. In 2003, they had the best loan repayment program of any law school for what I needed. I knew I wanted to do public interest so I was trying to find a school that would be supportive of that.

MNM: Walk me through what led you from law school into the field of law you are currently in.

LKA: Well, I went through law school and ultimately did several internships and a clinic doing civil legal services. I worked with domestic violence survivors, immigrants, etc. I knew I wanted to continue doing that work after school. I didn’t want to stay in New York after graduating NYU, so I applied around the country. I got a job offer with Legal Aid in Cincinnati. I started there because I liked how they assigned their work. Rather than having every attorney assigned all kinds of cases in the spectrum of everything Legal Aid handles, they assigned attorneys to two practice areas 50/50. It was also close to family and within a driving distance. I wanted to be back in the Midwest so I was happy with that.

So I was coming from New York and taking the bar in Ohio, and in Ohio, you had to complete the character and fitness portion of the admissions process, which included an in-person interview, before taking the bar. Because of the timing of everything I couldn’t take the July bar because when I had accepted the job in the spring it was too late to complete the character and fitness process before the July bar. Instead I had to sit for the following February bar. I started at Legal Aid in June 2006 and couldn’t take the bar until February 2007. So, Legal Aid put me in the two groups where lawyers don’t have to appear in court: public benefits and special education. Taking that job and getting assigned to that group is what kicked off the rest of my career.

MNM: What was your biggest takeaway from your work in those two groups?

LKA: Oh, that’s a good question! I think the biggest takeaway was that I realized how the school to prison pipeline was: in addition to being assigned a guardian ad litem, juvenile kids in the court system could get assigned a special education attorney from Legal Aid. I represented the parents but worked with the kids very closely. It was cool to get to know them and help them resolve their obstacles in school and in the juvenile system to reach their potential. From working with them I realized how much inadequate access to education truly does set people back. It puts them in the vortex of poverty and makes them vulnerable to abusive situations inside and outside of the system.

MNM: That’s so true, and I think so many attorneys struggle with the knowledge that there are so many flaws in the system and that they impact kids like this. For those young lawyers who might be interested in this field, can you tell us what does a day in the life of a partner at an education law firm look like?

LKA: Totally. I wake up around 730/8 a.m. I’ve stopped checking emails from bed in the morning, but I used to do that. I’ve just found that my mental health is better without email on my phone. But anyway, I start with emails first thing. Every day, I am booked and busy. I have supervisory meetings with attorneys and staff at the firm. Even though we operate primarily remote, I will have meetings face-to-face with clients sometimes. But I mostly work from home.

In addition to caseload, managing the firm involves a lot of long-term planning and goals. There are meetings with the other partners, all the kinds of details and headaches of business management that go into running a firm successfully. I am always working on business development. One thing I naturally do is reach out to other attorneys doing similar things that I am interested in. I’ve always been like that, but that does help in making connections and establishing a referral base. When you’re in leadership or running your own firm, basically you are always networking. I’m always in that headspace consciously or subconsciously.

For example, there’s a lot of people who need our services and don’t know we exist and I’m always brainstorming how to get the word out to them. Whenever I explain what we do to people, there is always someone who knows someone who needs help and they always tell me they didn’t know lawyers could serve in that role.

MNM: That makes a lot of sense – people have to know you’re there in order for you to be able to help them. What would you say you like best about your area of practice?

LKA: I’d say let’s split this into two since there are two main facets of my job: practicing education law and managing the firm. In terms of practicing education law it’s definitely working with the kids and families. It’s so rewarding. I love hearing back later on about how a kid is doing. The relationships you build working with these families are the best. Being a lawyer, I like working with people going through a challenge. It’s not like being a vacation planner working with people at a high point in their lives – here the clients are struggling with something, and they need you. But you build strong relationships and interpersonal connections out of that struggle.

In terms of managing the firm: I like working for myself. Honestly, I like not having a boss. At this point in my career I know what I want to do and how I want to do it. I have been in several toxic workplaces in the past with bad bosses and when you’re running your own firm, that’s not an issue.

MNM: I love that outlook! My parents run their own small business and I always felt the same way growing up. It’s so good to hear about how rewarding it is to work with the children and families that need help in the education system. What’s something you didn’t know about practicing education law before beginning it?

LKA: This is probably true of other areas of law, but it is so much about relationships and so little about the actual law. So much of your practice is about repairing and rebuilding the relationships between families and schools, and honestly what other area of law is there where the clients have to interact with the opposing party for another 18 years or more? In most cases, the opposing parties get to walk away or minimize interaction in the future. A critical part of my job is being able to ensure the clients have a workable relationship where they can work together with the school in a healthy way moving forward. Here in Michigan, in part because of the imbalance between the number of attorneys representing school districts versus the number of attorneys representing parents and students, parents have been silenced for so long, so I see this portion of the work as a long-term project in general. I want to make it so that parents in Michigan have a voice and the odds aren’t stacked against them from the beginning, because in the long run this will impact and benefit relationships with parents and schools since districts will take them more seriously. The relationships are so important for that bigger picture where the playing field needs to be leveled.

MNM: What would you say are the challenges with an education law practice? Is it more difficult balancing those relationships for the client?

LKA: The biggest challenge is that schools and school attorneys have been operating without checks and balances for a very long time here in Michigan. In Ohio, for example, I could pick up the phone and call a school’s attorney to explain how the school was violating the law and there was a good chance they might fix it without any further action needed. That does not happen here. It is a very adversarial culture between parents and schools, and unfortunately, often when attorneys get involved, it gets worse before it gets better because schools are not used to parents being represented. Generally the response to a parent trying to explain what is going on with their child is just denial – districts will outright say nothing is wrong. Schools in Michigan have largely become used to being able to do things their own way and any time they are challenged on a decision, it usually becomes adversarial.

Another challenge is that special education due process hearing officers are not properly trained in Michigan. Oftentimes, due process decisions will not align with the law. To be fair, the Michigan Department of Education (MDE) seems to be trying to work on this, but so far I haven’t seen a lot of progress there.

MNM: What’s something you wish they had taught you in law school to prepare you for this kind of practice?

LKA: How to practice law! I laugh, but I was completely lost my first year of law school. It was a B curve so the lowest grade you could get was a B-. Out of six classes I got five B- and one B. It was very bad academically that first year of law school. I remember my very first class was civil procedure. And I truly did not start understanding civil procedure until practicing law and it was the same with evidence. I would have benefitted so much from a practicum component, which I finally got from internships and clinics, but those components had to be added by me and weren’t mandatory parts of the curriculum. Theoretical education of things like civil procedure and evidence was not working for me – I needed a practical component to help me learn.

MNM: Speaking of things you’ve learned, what would you say is the most interesting thing you’ve learned in your practice?

LKA: There’s so many things but I would say personally, the best experience for me was working at MSU as a Title IX and civil rights investigator. When I started that job, I had no idea about Title IX because I hadn’t worked in it before. I learned so much about Title IX there and it completely changed the trajectory of my career.

Before starting at MSU, I had been working in legal aid offices for eight years and had kind of been pigeonholed as divorce and family law attorney. I wanted to do something new and challenging. Working in the Title IX office was not a litigation role, which I liked because I felt like I needed a break from that. Working on the inside in a Title IX office gave me substantial knowledge and skills that are so, so useful as a lawyer on the student side of things. I know how the interior mechanisms of a Title IX investigation work as well as Title VI, Title VII, and the Americans with Disabilities Act, etc. Having spent that time learning the mechanics of academia continues to pay dividends for me professionally. It was this huge, amazing learning experience that pays off to this day.

MNM: That’s awesome – it just goes to show how much one job can build on another. Do you have any advice for young attorneys who might be interested and looking to break into education law?

LKA: I would say, start telling people you do education law! At least if you live in Michigan, you will begin getting clients immediately because we need attorneys in this practice area. Reach out to me, I will share training materials with you. I encourage you to join the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates (COPAA), and they will also send you resources to familiarize yourself with the law. Then you can take a few cases and see if you like it. If you like it, just know there’s plenty of work for your practice here in Michigan. Go for it!

Liz Abdnour is a partner at Abdnour Weiker, an education law firm focused on representing students and families in Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania. If you were inspired by Liz’s story and are interested in pursuing education law, don’t hesitate to reach out to her at liz@education-rights.com. Inter Alia thanks Liz for her time and her candor in speaking with us!

If you liked this interview and you have an attorney in mind who you would like to see Inter Alia interview, send us an email at sbmyounglawyerssection@gmail.com.

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Megan N. Mitchell is an SBM YLS council member and attorney at Abdnour Weiker representing students and families with educational needs.