The State Bar of Michigan has hired Janet K. Welch to serve as general counsel for the Bar. She will also provide legal advice to the Board of Commissioners and Representative Assembly, and serve as staff liaison to the Public Policy Commissioner Committee. Welch begins her employment on December 1, 2000.

"Janet has served five chief justices with grace and distinction in a variety if capacities," said Michigan Supreme Court Chief Justice Elizabeth A. Weaver. "The Court appreciates her excellent work and wishes her well in her new position."

Welch, who has served as Counsel to the Michigan Supreme Court since January 1997, has had an extensive career in state government that started with her serving as a legislative analyst for the Michigan House of Representatives. In 1980, she was chosen to create a nonpartisan legislative analysis office for the Michigan Senate, and served as its director for five years before attending law school.

After a clerkship with Michigan Supreme Court Justice Robert P. Griffin, Welch accepted a position as executive analyst in the Office of the Chief Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court, where her work included analysis of legislative issues affecting the judicial system. In that capacity, she served as Reporter for the Commission on the Courts in the 21st Century, and as staff to the Michigan Justice Project. In 1998, the Council of State Governments named her a Toll Fellow for outstanding achievement and service to state government.

A Michigan native, Welch is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Albion College and the University of Michigan Law School. She is also a graduate of the Kennedy School of Government State and Local Senior Executive Program at Harvard University and was a Fulbright Scholar in comparative literature at the University of Zagreb in the former Yugoslavia.