(Left photo) A past president of the Oakland County Bar Foundation, Liz Luckenbach recently became president of the Oakland County Bar Association. She was sworn in at the OCBA Annual Meeting by Wendy Potts, former chief judge of the Oakland County Circuit Court. (Right photo) Liz Luckenbach (back row) and her husband Chris McLogan with their five daughters (left to right) Katie, Colby, Emily, Claudia, and Maggie.
By Tom Kirvan
Legal News
From the day she was sworn in as the new president of the Oakland County Bar Association last month, Liz Luckenbach made a pact with herself to lead by example.
In doing so, she also made a corresponding promise, one she hopes will be taken to heart by the membership at large.
“Starting with me, I’m making a commitment to show up for things, whether it be an OCBA social event, a committee meeting, a seminar, a conference, or the like,” said Luckenbach, a partner in the Troy office of Dickinson Wright, where she specializes in probate and fiduciary litigation. “Involvement in the bar is the key to getting things done, and showing up for activities also provides opportunities to meet other professionals, to learn from other professionals, and to mentor young members of our profession.”
That kind of devotion to the bar has been part of Luckenbach’s makeup since she returned to Oakland County in the summer of 2000 after beginning her legal career in suburban Chicago following graduation from DePaul University College of Law.
“My involvement in the bar has truly been a blessing, and has led to so much professional growth and to so many wonderful friendships,” said Luckenbach, a graduate of Cranbrook who earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Michigan State University.
One of those early friendships she forged was with then Kemp Klein attorney Cynthia Brazzil, who later would be instrumental in bringing Luckenbach onto the board of the Oakland County Bar Foundation (OCBF).
“I first met Liz through her involvement in bar association activities, specifically when she became active on the Membership Committee,” said Brazzil, an emeritus trustee of the OCBF. “I noticed right away that Liz not only regularly attended our meetings, but frequently offered good ideas and did not shy away from volunteering or participating in additional activities. In fact, she immediately
agreed to participate in the OCBA-ABCs of Practice program when I asked her.”
In 2012, Luckenbach became president of the Oakland Bar Foundation, a nonprofit organization that helps fund various legal aid and educational programs in the community. The leadership role then has helped prepare Luckenbach for the task ahead as president of the OCBA for 2022-23.
“All of my years on the board and on committees have made my new role as president a little less daunting,” Luckenbach acknowledged. “For the most part, it has just added another layer of responsibilities that I’m looking forward to tackling.”
Such enthusiasm is just one of the many special qualities that Luckenbach possesses, according to longtime Bloomfield Hills attorney George Googasian, a past president of the State Bar of Michigan and the OCBA.
“I’ve known Liz since she was in high school and she has all that it takes to be an outstanding president,” said Googasian, who served as emcee of the OCBA Annual Meeting on June 2 at which Luckenbach succeeded Kaveh Kashef as head of the largest volunteer bar association in the state. “She is smart, dedicated, and deeply committed to continuing the good works of the bar. She also
is an outstanding attorney who has earned the respect of her colleagues at the bar and in the legal community.”
Googasian, in turn, has served as a mentor and confidant to Luckenbach throughout her legal career.
“I’ve sought his advice and counsel on many occasions, and I’ve always appreciated his willingness to make time for me and to share his wisdom with me,” said Luckenbach. “He really is the gold standard when it comes to attorneys.”
A Birmingham native, Luckenbach was a two-sport performer at Cranbrook, playing field hockey and lacrosse. She indulged her interest in sports as a part-time writer for The Lansing State Journal during her college days at MSU, paying her dues cobbling together box scores of area high school games. She also did some freelance work for The Ann Arbor News, writing a feature on an 85-year-old woman who finished a marathon, a 26.2-mile test of running wills.
She moved to Seattle after college, landing a job as a public relations and marketing consultant for an architectural firm.
“I always had a plan to go to law school, but I just loved living out west with all the outdoor activities there are to enjoy,” she said.
The lure of life on the West Coast was so great that Luckenbach delayed her law school plans by two years, working as a bartender instead.
“My dad didn’t exactly buy into it, but I just wasn’t ready to buckle down and get on a career path,” Luckenbach said with a smile.
When law school did roll around in the fall of 1993, Luckenbach enrolled at DePaul University in Chicago, much closer to her roots in Michigan.
Her late father, Carl Luckenbach, was a renowned architect who designed projects throughout the United States and the world, including a number of buildings in Ann Arbor and on the campus of the University of Michigan, where he earned his undergraduate degree in architecture.
“One of his most notable projects was the Pontiac Silverdome, which opened in 1975 boasting the world’s then largest inflatable roof and the then world’s largest enclosed football stadium, where the Detroit Lions called home for 27 years,” Luckenbach wrote in her dad’s obituary that was published shortly after his death on January 9 of this year.
Luckenbach’s mother, B. Minor, who died in 2005, was an interior designer, most notably for the luxury suites at the 80,000-seat stadium that hosted the Super Bowl in 1982.
The mother of three daughters and the stepmother of two more, Luckenbach and her husband, Chris McLogan, an associate broker with Max Broock Realtors in Birmingham, also have two granddaughters.
“Let’s just say that there are a lot of girls in this family,” Luckenbach said with a laugh.
Her oldest daughter, 27-year-old Colby, is an alumna of the University of St. Thomas School of Law in Minneapolis, and is an assistant prosecutor at the Oakland County Prosecutor’s Office.
Luckenbach’s middle daughter, Claudia, is director of operations for the Oakland County Democratic Party after earning her bachelor’s degree in political science and Spanish from the College of Charleston.
“And my youngest daughter, Maggie, just graduated from high school and will be off to MSU in the fall where she will be enrolled in the James Madison College,” Luckenbach said with a strong sense of Spartan pride.
Her two stepdaughters, Katie (28) and Emily (26), also are charting their own impressive career paths. Katie is a nurse at Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, while Emily is a crime gun intelligence specialist who works in Kalamazoo on behalf of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF).
“Needless to say, we’re very proud of all of them,” said Luckenbach. “It’s also great that they all live relatively close by so that we get to see them with regularity.”
Luckenbach joined Dickinson Wright in 2018 after spending 12 years as a member of the Estate Planning/Probate and Litigation Practice groups at Jaffe. Her decision to leave a firm that she “loved” came about somewhat fortuitously, Luckenbach indicated.
“The universe operates in strange ways at times,” she said. “Over the years, I would get periodic calls from headhunters trying to recruit me to another firm. I never returned any of those calls until I listened to a message from one such headhunter who spoke of an opportunity at a firm that was growing geographically and expanding their practice areas. He didn’t mention the firm’s name, but after a couple of Google searches, I had a pretty good idea it was Dickinson.”
The decision to join a new firm – while difficult – was made somewhat easier by her familiarity and friendship with two of Dickinson Wright’s partners, Lynn Sirich and Dan Quick. Like Luckenbach, both Sirich and Quick are past presidents of the OCBF and Quick also served as president of the OCBA in 2019-20.
“I’ve known them both for years and have incredible respect for them, so their presence at the firm was a big check in the positive column when I was weighing my decision,” she said.
Sirich, who has been friends with Luckenbach since they were sorority sisters at MSU, jokes that “she is the Thelma to my Louise without the bad ending,” alluding to the 1991 award-winning movie starring Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon.
“I can’t say enough good things about Liz,” said Sirich. “Aside from being a terrific attorney, Liz is a giver and is someone who is always willing to help out for a good cause. She will be 100 percent committed to being president of the OCBA, and will put all her energy and talent into leading the bar over the next year.”
The move to Dickinson Wright also has given Luckenbach ample opportunity to litigate cases, even though the pandemic caused a more than a year-long break in courtroom action. Of particular note, she spent 15 days in trial last year on a probate case at the historic Marquette County Courthouse, which served as the setting for the filming of the 1959 movie “Anatomy of a Murder” starring Jimmy Stewart and George C. Scott.
The probate case, which began in 2018, is a high-stakes legal matter that has taken its share of twists and turns as well. The case is now in the hands of the county’s lone probate judge.
“A decision could come any day now,” Luckenbach said.
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