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East Lansing council interviews two firms for labor and employment counsel
Summary
At a March 16 special meeting, East Lansing councilors heard 30-minute interviews from two law firms proposing to provide labor and employment legal services. Firms emphasized municipal experience, training, responsiveness and differing contract approaches; no contract award was announced.
The East Lansing City Council on March 16 held interviews with two law firms seeking the city's labor and employment counsel contract, hearing presentations about experience, pricing, training and how firms would handle bargaining and police-related legal issues.
John Clark, identified in the interview as a senior partner with the presenting firm, said the team's strengths are municipal labor experience, competitive rates and responsiveness. Clark said the firm quoted an hourly rate of $195 for his time and $175 for other attorneys and underscored experience with Public Act 312 arbitration and internal investigations. "Experience is huge," Clark said, adding that the firm uses calendaring and ticklers to ensure timely responses and that a designated associate performs legislative and court-case analyses.
Clark described firm programs to train management and departmental staff on harassment, discrimination, record-keeping and use-of-force issues, and said the team is familiar with the city's collective bargaining agreements and recent contracts.
The council then heard from a team led by Rosani Schultz and Jeremy Romer, who said their proposal would fold labor and employment into the firm's existing five-year contract so coverage would run concurrently with the current agreement. Romer, who said he spent his career in municipal law including work in Dearborn, emphasized backup capacity and multiple attorneys available to support the city on negotiations and litigation.
Council members focused questions on three areas: how counsel would guide debates over public-safety policy while limiting legal exposure; how firms track and communicate legal developments; and lessons from a prior administrative-law judge decision that intersected with the city's police oversight ordinance. Firm representatives recommended that council set clear bargaining goals (for example, whether priority is cost-control, staff retention or pension changes), keep communication channels open so community concerns can inform bargaining positions, and monitor legislative and judicial developments that could alter bargaining subjects.
Neither firm was selected at the meeting. The interviews concluded after roughly 30 minutes each; council recessed briefly and moved to a closed-session agenda item before returning to take other actions.
