Kelly Burris
Founder and Owner
Burris Law, Detroit
Employees: 23
Revenue: NA
“I love being up in the air,” says Kelly Burris, a pilot since 1985 and the owner of Burris Law in Detroit. “It’s definitely an escape. It’s a different world.”
Burris knows a lot about different worlds. She started her career, after graduating from Western Michigan University, as an aeronautical engineer at McDonnell Douglas in St. Louis and then was with Boeing after the two aviation giants merged in 1998.
“I loved being an engineer and I loved research and development,” says Burris, who worked on advanced composite materials, structural design, production manufacturing, ballistics research, and virtual reality and CAD/CAM technology and applications. The aircraft she worked on included the T45 Goshawk Navy trainer, F18 EF, Harrier jump jet, and the F15 Eagle fighter jet.
While at McDonnell Douglas, Burris attended the St. Louis University School of Law at night to become a patent attorney, at the urging of the company’s CFO. “She said, ‘You’ll make a lot more money,’ ” Burris recalls.
She left Boeing in 1999 and joined a patent law firm in Ann Arbor. Eventually, she earned enough to purchase her first airplane, a 1962 Beechcraft Debonair. She competed in three Women’s Air Race Classic contests while at the controls of her Beechcraft, and won the event in 2009.
Burris opened a satellite office of the Ann Arbor firm and eventually decided to break off from the parent company to start her own practice.
Her firm focuses on patents, trademarks, and trade secrets. Its specialty is advising companies in mergers and acquisitions, especially when intellectual property is involved. Burris counts Ford Motor Co., Cisco, and Harmon among her clients, as well as startups. Her latest client is a man who invented a new pickleball paddle.
Her aviation background makes her a natural for work in aerospace technology, but she also works in automotive, semiconductors, medical, green/clean technologies, manufacturing technologies, welding and gas-cutting, metallurgy, ceramic and composite materials, and consumer products.
“I do a lot of IP strategies with companies,” she says of her work.
Owning her own company enabled her to purchase the airplane of her dreams, a French-made Daher TBM 940. It’s a single-engine, high-performance turboprop aircraft with advanced safety features including an auto land system, and it’s capable of jet-like speeds.
In order to finalize the financing for the plane, Burris sold her house in Pleasant Ridge and lived in her hangar in Ann Arbor for eight months. She now resides in an historic Palmer Woods home.
Burris says the new plane allows her to crisscross the country dozens of times each year to meet with inventors, engineers, and business executives. She functions as a fully integrated member of client teams, working proactively to manage portfolios and provide strategic competitive intelligence.
For her efforts, she was named Best Lawyers’ 2023 Lawyer of the Year award for Patent Law in Detroit, and was selected by her peers for inclusion on The Best Lawyers in America list for Patent Law from 2021 through 2025. When she’s not working and flying, Burris is a champion of education. “I strongly believe that education is the key to a better life,” she asserts.
Backing up her words with action, Burris is a trustee of her alma mater, Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo. She also uses her legal skills to benefit the aviation community as a member of the Michigan Aeronautics Commission.
In addition, she provides pro bono intellectual property representation for the Ninety-Nines, an international organization of women pilots, as well as Women in Aviation International, a nonprofit organization providing networking, education, mentoring, and scholarship opportunities in the aviation and aerospace industries.
What’s more, she’s a volunteer pilot with Angel Flight Central and Angel Flight Mid-Atlantic, nonprofit organizations that provide free air transportation to medical patients in need, and Pilots-N-Paws, a nonprofit that provides transportation for rescuing, sheltering, and adopting animals.
Outside of her legal work and flying, Burris is active in the Detroit Athletic Club and is a member of the board of directors for the TBM Owners and Pilots Association.
The foundation for all of her extracurricular activities, however, is her desire to be at the leading edge of technology — although from a different perspective, as a patent attorney. Flying her own plane to meet clients is a major benefit, as well.
“I love this,” she says. “I love getting in the plane, flying around the country meeting clients, and talking to engineers about what they’re developing and how we’re going to protect it.”
— Tim Keenan
“I wear a Fifinella lapel pin, the mascot of the Women Airforce Service Pilots from World War II, given to me by one of the WASP pilots I raced with. It’s a tribute to the trailblazing women who flew against all odds.”
