William J. Lawson (Emeritus)

Becoming a lawyer was my calling. I was aware of this from an early age. In college I took a survey matching occupations interest to the person who took the survey. The results indicted that my interest lay in the areas of social studies, teaching and law. I became a social studies teacher and a lawyer. Could the test have been that accurate? Was it a case of a self-fulfilling prophecy? I began teaching in Livonia Public Schools and started evening law school classes at Wayne State University in the Fall of 1966. After an initial six weeks of doing both, I decided to focus on my teaching career and withdrew from the law school. In due course I achieved a Masters in Education.

I was working on a Ph.D. in Education at University of Michigan in 1972, when I awoke one morning and announced to my wife , “I have to go back to law school.” My teaching career spanned 25 years in Livonia Public Schools. While teaching Psychology and going to law school in the evenings (for four years, graduating in1976), I developed a law course for high school students. That led to a Federal grant to prepare others to teach law to high school students. After passing the Bar Exam, I became an attorney in November of 1976. Because I was teaching during the day, going to court to handle litigation and criminal or divorce cases was out of the question. For that reason, I concentrated on developing a practice related to estate planning, trusts, wills and probate- things that could be done late afternoon and evenings.