Justice Maura Corrigan of Butzel Long’s Detroit office has been named to Michigan Lawyers Weekly’s inaugural Hall of Fame Class of 2019. She is among 20 attorneys who was honored during a luncheon on May 30 at the Detroit Marriott in Troy as well as in the June 3 edition of Michigan Lawyers Weekly.
Corrigan concentrates her practice in litigation and appeals and has made contributions in both the legal profession and in child welfare.
She served as a law clerk to Judge John Gillis of the Michigan Court of Appeals. She then became a Wayne County assistant prosecuting attorney in 1974 and chief of appeals in the U.S. attorney’s office in Detroit in 1979. In 1986, she was promoted to chief assistant U.S. attorney and was the first woman to hold the position. She became a partner at Plunkett and Cooney in 1989.
In 1992, former Michigan Gov. John Engler appointed her to the Michigan Court of Appeals. In 1997, the Michigan Supreme Court named her chief judge of the appeals court. She was elected to the Michigan Supreme Court in 1998 and reelected in 2006. Corrigan is the only person ever to serve as chief judge of both the Court of Appeals and Supreme Court.
Corrigan left the court on Jan. 14, 2011 to become director of the Michigan Department of Human Services under former Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder.
From 2015-2016, Corrigan was a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., where she worked on poverty and child welfare issues, testifying in Congress, authoring papers and book chapters, and serving as a liaison to state secretaries of human services.
Corrigan serves on five nonprofit boards. She is a past president of the Incorporated Society of Irish American Lawyers and the Detroit Chapter of the Federal Bar Association.
She served as a public member of the Michigan Law Revision Commission, as an executive board member of the Michigan Judges Association, and as a member of the Judicial Advisory Board of the Center for Law and Organizational Economics at the University of Kansas Law School. She was also vice-president of the Conference of Chief Justices.
Corrigan earned her juris doctorate from the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law and her bachelor’s degree from Marygrove College.
Butzel Long was founded in Detroit in 1854. Its offices are located in Detroit, Bloomfield Hills, Lansing, New York City, and Washington, D.C. It also has alliance offices in Beijing and Shanghai. Butzel Long is an active member of Lex Mundi, a global association of 160 independent law firms.
