Evelyn is a classic example of an attorney and counselor. During and immediately after her undergraduate years at Temple University, she was trained as a crisis counselor and she attended Temple's police academy.
She put those skills to use first in 9-1-1-emergency dispatch centers, then as an intake counselor in the state of Florida's juvenile justice system investigating child abuse and neglect and counseling families when a child had been charged with a crime, and finally as the director of the Naples, Florida, branch of a shelter and counseling center for runaway youth and their families. But she wanted to use those skills to represent those families in court.
She learned the law and how to practice it at Western Michigan University Cooley Law School, and added those skills to her counseling skills. She served as a judicial law clerk to the late Justice Patricia J. Boyle of the Michigan Supreme Court, where she honed those research and writing skills to make her the relentless, resourceful, reasonable, and reliable attorney that she is today.
With those skills sharpened, Evelyn practiced as an appellate lawyer for ten years. She was the Chair of the State Bar of Michigan's Appellate Practice Section. Her practice areas included personal injury, employment law, insurance law, civil rights, and equine law.
After she started teaching legal research and writing, appellate advocacy, and other legal practice skills at Western Michigan University Thomas Cooley Law School, she was able to return to her child welfare roots and work pro bono on behalf of families involved in Michigan's child protection, foster care, and adoption systems, helping families to understand their rights and responsibilities and representing them in trial and appellate courts. She was the Chair of the State Bar of Michigan's Children's Law Section.
She is currently a committee member on the Supreme Court Administrative Office, Child Welfare Division, Court Improvement Committee working with judges, lawyers, and social workers to ensure that when Michigan's children and their families go into court, they have quality lawyers, judges, social workers and other staff working with them to reunite families. She also teaches appellate practice to child welfare lawyers so that families receive quality legal representation in Michigan's appellate courts.
