Members

Ms. Gracey is a prominent attorney with a diversified practice that includes defense of state and federal criminal defendants, centered in her Sylvan Lake office. A former president of the Oakland County Bar Association, Ms. Gracey has served on the State Bar of Michigan’s Criminal Justice Task Force and Criminal Jurisprudence Committee.

Ms. Lank has worked for the Michigan Court of Appeals for over 30 years and currently serves as District Clerk of the Detroit Office. She is a member of the Court's Quality Review and Court Rules Committees and took a leading role in rewriting the Court's manuals to assist self-represented litigants.

Darryl J. Woods, of Detroit, is an elder at Greater Temple in Detroit and a youth mentor. Mr. Woods is a returning citizen. He was the chairman of the NAACP Detroit Branch Program Committee for over 15 years and he created a youth deterrent program, now referred to as Cared Straight, that diverted youth from the juvenile justice system.

Judge Solka retired in 2017 after serving eighteen years as a Circuit Court judge for the 25th Circuit in Marquette County. Following retirement from the bench Judge Solka started a mediation and arbitration practice serving the Upper Peninsula and Northern Michigan. Before election to the bench in 1998 Judge Solka had 25 years of courtroom experience as a trial and appellate attorney in the Upper Peninsula and northern Wisconsin. His litigation career included experience as a legal services attorney, court appointed counsel for indigent people accused of crimes, and as an Assistant Prosecutor for Marquette County. After leaving the public sector Judge Solka went into private practice concentrating in civil trial and appellate work. He was admitted to practice in Michigan and Wisconsin state courts, the Federal District Court for the Western District of Michigan, and the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Following his retirement from the bench the Michigan Judges Association awarded Judge Solka the Hilda Gage Judicial Excellence Award for his contributions to the profession, legal scholarship, and to his community.

Brandy Robinson is a public defender and native Detroiter, who has devoted the last 19 years of her legal career to working on behalf of marginalized people. She is currently a staff attorney at the Federal Community Defender Office, where she represents individuals at all stages of the criminal process. She appears regularly in the Eastern District of Michigan and the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and is a member of the United States Supreme Court Bar. Before resuming her work at the Federal Defender Office, Brandy served as a Supervisor and then the Managing Attorney at the Neighborhood Defender Service of Detroit. Brandy got her start as a public defender at SADO.

Brandy graduated from the University of Michigan Law School in 2003, and she served as a law clerk to the Honorable Julian Abele Cook Jr. of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan. Brandy is a past president of the Wolverine Bar Association, past Chair of the State Bar of Michigan Young Lawyers Section, a former member of the State Bar of Michigan Board of Commissioners, and past Vice-Chair of the Michigan Indigent Defense Commission.

Janet Welch was executive director of the State Bar of Michigan from 2007 until her retirement in 2022. She came to the State Bar from the Michigan Supreme Court, where after serving as law clerk to former U.S. Senator and Michigan Supreme Court Justice Robert Griffin she remained to serve as counsel to five chief justices. She has an extensive history of involvement in court and legal profession reform. Early in her legal career, she was the reporter for Michigan’s 21st Century Courts Commission, and later, as Michigan Supreme Court counsel, helped design and implement trial court restructuring and other administrative reforms. Under her direction, the State Bar of Michigan has led reform efforts in trial court and judicial funding, indigent defense, and access to justice. She currently serves as the co-chair of the Regulatory and Practice Reform committee of the Michigan Supreme Court’s Justice for All Commission and is a member of the governing council of the ABA Center for Legal Innovation.

Conor Dugan is a partner with SouthBank Legal in its Grand Rapids, Michigan office. He earned his Bachelor of Arts in Government from Dartmouth College and his Juris Doctorate from the University of Notre Dame Law School. He has a national litigation and counseling practice. Before entering private practice, he spent nearly seven years with the Department of Justice in its Civil Rights Division. He is an active appellate litigator who has argued cases in federal appellate courts across the nation and in two different state Supreme Courts. Conor also has an active investigative and white-collar practice. He is also involved in his community serving on numerous boards including the Board of Trustee of Aquinas College.