Attorney Erwin Ellmann, of Doepken Keevican and Weiss, has been selected to receive the 2001 Distinguished Service Award from the Labor and Employment Law Section of the State Bar of Michigan. The award is given each year to a Michigan attorney who exemplifies outstanding service and professionalism in the practice of labor and employment law. "Over more than half of a century, Erwin Ellmann has served his clients and his profession at the highest possible level," said Lansing attorney Art Przybylowicz, chair of the Labor and Employment Law Section. "He has made numerous important contributions to the body of labor law during his distinguished career, and I know of no one more deserving of this honor than Erwin."

A graduate of the University of Michigan Law School, Ellmann served early in his career at the United States Department of Labor, where he was involved in several Depression-era decisions that began to dramatically reshape American labor law. He returned to Michigan following World War II, where he established a flourishing labor practice. At the same time, he joined with a small group of lawyers who were working to revive the faltering presence of the ACLU, first in Detroit and later statewide. Through that affiliation he was involved in cases that challenged Michigan's one-man grand jury system, real estate discrimination in Grosse Pointe and numerous others.

In addition to his teaching, lecturing and legal writing over the past half century, Ellmann has also served as an arbitrator in hundreds of labor, employment, securities and commercial cases. "The wishes and interests of one's client define the advocate's objective and zeal to achieve it," Ellmann said. "But the passion to reach a just result is of a different order of stress."

Ellmann is a resident of Birmingham, Michigan. He will receive the Distinguished Service Award on January 26 in Ypsilanti, at the mid-winter meeting of the Labor and Employment Law Section.