PARTNER
HONIGMAN, BLOOMFIELD HILLS
EMPLOYEES: 800
REVENUE: NA
COLLEGE: COLLEGE OF WOOSTER (OHIO)
As the child of a career General Motors executive, Tim Lee bounced around a lot during his childhood — but since 2021, he’s been a staple in the Honigman stable of attorneys.
Born in Hamilton, Ohio, outside of Cincinnati, Lee and his family moved to Michigan when he was a baby. He spent the third and fourth grades in Tokyo while his father was on assignment with GM’s one-time joint venture with Isuzu Motors.
Upon returning to the U.S., the Lees settled in Bloomfield Hills and Tim attended the University of Detroit Jesuit High School in Detroit, where he played soccer and lacrosse. He graduated from the College of Wooster back in his birth state, where he continued his lacrosse career.
Law school still wasn’t on his radar when he and his new wife moved to East Lansing, where she attended medical school while he worked in state government doing legislative policy work for a pair of state representatives and a state senator. It was under the capitol dome in Lansing that the idea of a legal career took root. Lee graduated from the Michigan State University Law School in 2016.
“You have these ideas of what you’re interested in and eventually you realize the amount you didn’t know surprises you,” Lee says of his transition from government policy to transactional law. “Once you get to law school you find there’s so much more to law than getting bills passed through the Legislature,” he says.
According to Lee, law school pushes students toward litigation, and that’s what he thought he wanted to do. But after a summer working at Clark Hill in Detroit, he discovered business law.
Lee worked as a judicial extern for Judge David McKeague of the U.S. Court of Appeals Sixth Circuit while in law school. Upon graduation, he joined Clark Hill as an associate attorney and spent three years there.
In 2019, he moved to Howard & Howard Attorneys in Royal Oak as a corporate attorney and partner. He stayed there for two years, then joined Honigman as a corporate, mobility, and supply chain partner.
Lee describes what he likes about transactional corporate law compared to what he might have faced as a litigator.
“When I talk to my clients, they’re generally in good moods,” he says. “We’re talking about great business opportunities that they’re going to pursue and they’re excited about it. In litigation, generally speaking, you’re talking to your client because they’re being sued or are involved in a lawsuit. It’s very adversarial.”
Today, Lee concentrates his practice on domestic and cross-border corporate transactions, mergers and acquisitions, corporate finance, and general corporate governance and compliance. He regularly represents businesses and financial institutions in complex commercial transactions. In addition, he assists foreign and domestic corporations and limited liability companies in all phases of formation, dissolution, operations, compliance, and management, and on all forms and stages of contractual matters.
Looking toward the future, Lee is bullish on what AI can bring to the legal profession.
“It’s amazing how AI has developed even in the last 12 months,” he says. “I think the future of how attorneys practice law is going to change greatly. It’s important that law firms really embrace AI and the opportunities and benefits it can provide, while also understanding the pitfalls it may bring.”
— Tim Keenan
