Alena Clark-Sullivan did not set out to join or lead the State Bar of Michigan Representative Assembly. But several years ago, she encountered a problem and eventually discovered that the Representative Assembly might house the solution.
At the time, Clark-Sullivan was president of the Women Lawyers Association of Michigan (WLAM). A member raised concerns about judges belonging to organizations that engaged in insidious discriminatory practices, prompting Clark-Sullivan and other association leaders to examine Michigan’s Code of Judicial Conduct. They found that Michigan’s provisions did not align with the federal judicial code and those of many other states, which expressly addressed membership in organizations with insidious discriminatory practices.
Clark-Sullivan and then-outgoing WLAM president Donna MacKenzie helped assemble a coalition of approximately a dozen organizations to find a solution. They discovered the best venue for effectuating change was the Representative Assembly, the State Bar’s final policy-making body.
Clark-Sullivan presented a proposal during RA’s first remote meeting of the COVID-19 pandemic. What followed, she recalled, felt like an hour-long cross-examination. The rigorous questioning left her with two lasting impressions: The RA was a meaningful place to propose new ideas, and the RA provided a voice for Michigan’s attorneys regardless of geographic location or area of practice.
“I realized this is a really great place to present ideas,” Clark-Sullivan said. “And it is really important that we have representation from marginalized communities. This is where things are happening. We need to have a seat at this table.”
Clark-Sullivan soon found an open seat in her judicial circuit and joined the assembly. Roughly seven years later, she is preparing to lead it.
Her path to the chair began when fellow member and then Clerk of the RA Nicole Evans asked whether she would consider running for clerk as part of a plan to create an all-women RA leadership team. Clark-Sullivan’s response was immediate: “Say less.” She ran, won, and began moving through the leadership ranks and learned that the role also included a seat on the State Bar Board of Commissioners and on one of its committees.
Evans’ invitation reflected a pattern that has shaped Clark-Sullivan’s career: Someone recognizes her potential and encourages her to pursue an opportunity she had not previously considered. The first person to do that was a 10th-grade social studies and civics teacher. Clark-Sullivan had met lawyers before, but the profession still remained largely a mystery and certainly seemed inaccessible to her. Then her teacher, Mr. Puelo at Grand Haven High School, told her she should consider law school, noting her strength as a public speaker and passion for equality and justice. Clark-Sullivan jokes that her willingness to challenge authority may have helped him recognize her potential as an advocate.
Clark-Sullivan went on to become the first person in her family to become an attorney, and she has since tried to offer others the same kind of encouragement. To her, leadership is less about advancing her own ideas than it is about helping other people recognize and develop their strengths.
That can mean connecting someone with a mentor, creating a lower-risk opportunity to try a new role, or simply telling a lawyer managing imposter syndrome, “You’re really good at this. Have you considered doing X, Y, or Z?” The reward, Clark-Sullivan said, is watching that person discover what they can do.
“It’s not about you when you’re the leader,” she said. “You have the ability and the responsibility to help the people you lead.”
Clark-Sullivan’s leadership drive also traces back to her grandmother, who encouraged her from an early age to build an identity of her own. Her grandmother remained active in community organizations and maintained lifelong friendships, providing an example Clark-Sullivan took to heart. When Clark-Sullivan entered law school, she joined the Women’s Law Caucus to help build her own network, which connected her with WLAM. The relationships she formed through women’s organizations became a professional support system and helped open doors throughout her career.
Regarding her approach to volunteer leadership, Clark-Sullivan said, “If I’m going to be involved in something, it’s really important to me that I give back. I’m not just going to show up. I’m going to help.”
Public service has been another constant in Clark-Sullivan’s career. She began in the Corporation Council for the City of Dearborn, then served as a judicial staff attorney in Wayne County Circuit Court’s Family Division and in Oakland County Probate Court. She spent nearly a decade as a prosecutor, handling general litigation, appellate matters, felony trials, and major crimes. For the past three and a half years, she has worked in the Michigan Department of Attorney General’s Public Service Division, representing the Michigan Public Service Commission and its Staff in highly technical matters involving energy, rates, and emerging issues such as renewable power and data centers.
The work is markedly different from prosecution, which Clark-Sullivan loved, but its public impact is broad. Utility regulation affects Michigan residents across the state, and it intersects with environmental stewardship and new energy policy and involves an ever-changing legal landscape. It also requires Clark-Sullivan to absorb complicated information from engineers, accountants, and other experts — and it offers her the opportunity to keep learning.
Understanding a broad range of perspectives will serve Clark-Sullivan well in the RA, where members arrive with different practices, communities, cultures, religions, and political views. Clark-Sullivan considers diversity the assembly’s greatest strength.
“The RA is a space where we can have reasonable and respectful conversations about tough issues and where everyone has the opportunity to be heard,” she said. “I want to hear people out, even when I don’t agree with them, and respect their right to address the assembly. Leaders need to be able to hold space for all those points of view without judgment.”
One of Clark-Sullivan’s principal goals is to help the RA build on its multiyear work related to Michigan’s legal deserts or assist communities with too few lawyers in meeting residents’ legal needs. With the problem more clearly identified and documented, she wants the assembly to explore what comes next.
Clark-Sullivan lives in Branch County, near the Indiana border, where there are very few lawyers and even fewer (if any) local bar associations. Legal deserts are a growing issue in Michigan and nationwide — and an issue she wants to help the State Bar of Michigan continue addressing because of its widespread impact from Branch to Baraga County. She is especially interested in looking at collaborations that can support Michigan’s tribal courts, which are also among the communities being impacted by legal deserts.
“I don’t want to make the lives of lawyers in underserved communities more difficult,” she said. “Attorneys in legal deserts may already be carrying heavy workloads and filling several essential roles. The question is: What can we do to help?”
Time is one of the assembly’s greatest constraints, Clark-Sullivan believes. The full RA typically meets twice per year — a manageable commitment that helps busy lawyers, but a schedule that limits how much business can be completed. Clark-Sullivan is already looking for opportunities to make the most of those meetings and additional ways members can work together, including reevaluating the structure of the standing committees — where much of the heavy lifting is done at the RA.
Away from work and bar service, Clark-Sullivan is settling into a new home with her wife, Susan, who goes by Sully. A United States Army combat veteran, Sully now works as an aviation technician. The newlyweds share their home with their 9-year-old husky, Odin, who travels with them whenever possible, and three rescue cats: Hocus, Pocus, and Sissy. Clark-Sullivan credits Sully with patiently supporting a volunteer schedule that involves more lawyers and lawyer talk than either of them may have anticipated.
Clark-Sullivan has been described as “not a shrinking violet” by Evans, who is also her predecessor as RA chair. Clark does not expect that to change when she takes the reins herself, but it is just as important to her to make sure others are willing to speak up, too.
Years after Clark-Sullivan first came to the RA believing it was important for people like her to have a seat at the table, she now will lead that table — and she wants every Michigan lawyer to know they can and should pull up a chair.
And no need to bring your own folding chair, Clark-Sullivan says in reference to the famous quote, “If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair” by Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman elected to Congress and one of Clark’s personal heroes.
“Show up and tell us what you think,” Clark-Sullivan said, “because everybody’s perspective is important — and we have room for everybody.”