BY CHRIS HENNING
Lawyer, philosopher and student. Professor, businessman and pilot. Add to that gourmet chef and powerbroker and you’ll have captured—in words, at least—much of what Clifton Haley, ’61, embodies. Haley, elected president last year, is at the helm of Michigan State University-Detroit College of Law (MSU-DCL). He joined the board in 1997 and has served as vice president since 1998.
While he was growing up, Clifton Haley recalls, his family was economically poor but intellectually rich.
“I learned at my mother’s knee,” he says. What his mother didn’t teach him, he learned at the library. There he encountered Aristotle. “I took to heart early a treatise on Aristotle that man naturally wants to know.”
“Wanting to know” has fueled Haley in a career—and life—that spans the globe.
Two automakers added their own fuel. Attending DCL by night, Haley worked for Chrysler by day as a labor relations manager. But it was executives from Ford Motor Company who would invite the young law student to lunch. They picked his brain about how to successfully and legally navigate the waters of white-collar unionization; Chrysler’s white-collar workforce already was unionized, and Ford’s was on its way. When he graduated from law school, Ford offered him a job.
“It wasn’t a matter of Ford putting up barriers or obviating the union,” Haley explains, “but rather making sure that white-collar personnel policies were fair and legal. These were unchartered waters for them, and they thought my legal education and experience at Chrysler in that milieu could be valuable to them.”
A whole is that which has a beginning, middle and end
Haley didn’t want to be a labor relations lawyer, though, and told Ford executives as much right up front.
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Clifton Haley, ’61
President, MSU-DCL
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“Law school—and the law—gave me the discipline to always try to be better prepared than the competition. One of the principal reasons my partner and I won at the law school level and then represented DCL in the national moot court competition, was that for every oral competition, we researched and prepared responses to virtually every possible argument that could have been raised by the other side or the judges. In business we were successful more often than not because of that tough law school discipline. My legal education also taught me to resolve conflict based on objective analysis and reason.”
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“Almost from the beginning, I wanted to be a businessman who ran things, to be next to the operations and business side of corporations. I think I had an entrepreneurial bent early in my career.”
Ford had a pretty good idea about how to keep Haley and his talents at work for them while also satisfying the young lawyer’s appetite for all things business. When Ford International needed general managers for its European operations, they found what they were looking for in Haley.
The automaker knew that Europe’s more legal, formalistic structure, in contrast to the entrepreneurial U.S., required somebody who could quickly learn the concepts of foreign governments and regulations. Companies that were most successful in Europe were those with executives who had both legal and business experience—people like Haley.
“But for my legal background,” he says, “I would not have been given the European assignment.”
Attending DCL by night, Haley worked for Chrysler by day as a labor relations manager. But it was executives from Ford Motor Company who would invite the young law student to lunch.
When he returned stateside, automobile leasing and car rental was on the upswing in the U.S., and Ford saw an opportunity to open a new distribution channel for its vehicles. They needed somebody who understood the connection between law and commerce, and gave Haley the challenge of forming and heading the new endeavor.
“They gave me a lot of money, and told me to go out and buy leasing companies.”
Because of Haley’s legal skills and operations experience, he was able to act swiftly to launch the new enterprise. In acquiring or setting up new rental or leasing companies, he also relied on his experience to conduct negotiations, arrange financing, and handle all but the local legal challenges in connection with the emerging deals.
Over the next few years, Haley and his team acquired and developed about 70 such operations for Ford; one involved setting up a leasing company in Chicago whose sole purpose was to lease cars to Budget Rent-a-Car.
Up to his elbows in legal documents, tax implications and entrepreneurs, while also trying to obtain financing, Haley was too busy to notice the impact he was having. Budget’s president wasn’t. He offered Haley a job, and the lawyer who wanted to run a business joined the company, subsequently initiating a strategy to transform Budget from its franchise mode to an operating company.
Under Haley’s leadership, the company saw earnings skyrocket, debt-to-equity ratios improve significantly, and revenue approach $1 billion—and growing annually at a 25 percent clip.
Haley traveled the globe, helping Budget gain market share and improve operating performance. Just eight years after joining the company, Haley’s life and career changed dramatically.
Like parent companies of other major car rental firms, Transamerica, which owned Budget, was reversing its conglomerate strategy to concentrate on its core business. All of the big four auto rental companies were put on the auction block.
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A competition takes place in the Clif and Carolyn Haley Moot Court Room.
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As partnered undergrads, Clifton Haley and Aubrey McCutcheon represented MSU-DCL in the 1961 national moot court competition.
In preparing the two law students, legendary MSU-DCL constitutional law professor Charles Clark required their brief to meet the exacting standards of the U.S. Supreme Court. He also insisted they anticipate every question they might get from the judges during the competition. The duo went in with prepared responses to virtually every possible question. While they didn’t land first place, Haley says he’s never forgotten the lessons Professor Clark imparted to him—chiefly, to always be better prepared than the opponent.
Today, the MSU-DCL Moot Court classroom bears the name of Clifton and Carolyn Haley, in recognition of their major unrestricted gift to the college during the building’s development campaign.
Of their gift, Carolyn Haley says, “It’s a pleasure for us to be able to do something of that nature, and while we didn’t expect to be recognized this way, we’re honored just the same.”
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“Because of my legal training and mergers and acquisitions experience, I was able to lead a management-leveraged buyout to acquire Budget from Transamerica. And,” he says, “I really began to understand law as a means to an end, and saw more clearly how law is entwined with history, society, relationships and commerce.”
If happiness is activity in accordance with excellence, it is reasonable that it should be in accordance with the highest excellence
Haley found himself up against a lineup of savvy investment bankers, Japanese equity partners, commercial bankers, and “big league” players in law and business. It was Haley’s team—with Haley playing more than one position—that ultimately scored the winning run. Despite losing the bidding war, Budget management landed a 20 percent cut of the Budget pie. Shortly after, the lawyer with the DCL edge was named the company’s president and chief operating officer.
In short order, Wall Street bankers took an immense liking to Budget with a very successful IPO. Soon thereafter, Ford came calling. What wasn’t there to like? Under Haley’s leadership, the company saw earnings skyrocket, debt-to-equity ratios improve significantly, and revenue approach $1 billion—and growing annually at a 25 percent clip. Ford acted swiftly with a preemptive bid, and Haley, with his team of three Budget executives and a couple of investment bankers, negotiated over a weekend in New York with an army of Ford lawyers, negotiators and investment bankers. When the deal was completed, Haley was elected chairman and chief executive officer for Budget, a position he held until his 1993 retirement.
“Somebody else with a legal background could’ve done that job,” Haley says now, “but I don’t think they would’ve been able to deal with all the complex merger and acquisition issues in as short a timeframe as needed and without legal counsel. In an environment where time was crucial and measured by hours, not days, my DCL legal education was key.
“Around the world and in the U.S., lawyers lead a lot of big corporations in business. In fact, history has some wonderful examples. Dupont was run for years by its former general counsel, and MSU is led by a business lawyer in President McPherson.”
Add Budget, and now MSU-DCL to the list, each led at one time by MSU-DCL alumnus Clifton Haley.
Every science and every inquiry, and similarly every activity and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good
Haley says successful businesses work from a set of short-term goals to meet a long-term strategy. Thus, he describes “twin goals” he’d like to see accomplished during his tenure as MSU-DCL’s president—goals he says are neither subordinate one to the other nor hierarchical, but which work in tandem to achieve a common good for all of the law college’s constituents, stakeholders and alumni.
“I’d like to see an increase in the law school’s academic standing, its image and ranking—not just a U.S. News and World Report type ranking, but rather one where everyone sees MSU-DCL as an institution highly regarded for its distinguished faculty and alumni, as well as the quality of the legal education and experience.”
In its more than 100-year history, Haley notes, the MSU-DCL curriculum has been broad-based so students can learn the law in its entirety.
“At the same time, we need to have a substantive endowment so we can attract the nation’s top legal scholars and implement new programs—programs like the Trial Practice program. And we need to do that within the framework of maintaining affordability, accessibility, and the diversity of being both an independent law school and a school of law within a Big Ten university.”
With regard to excellence, it is not enough to know, but we must try and use it
His legacy firmly in place in the business world, Haley seeks to give equally to MSU-DCL his gifts of time and talent, dedication and devotion—the same gifts he brings to every endeavor in which he has engaged.
Haley uses his own training, his education at DCL, and his experience teaching mergers and acquisitions at the law school, to prepare tomorrow’s lawyers for the challenges, opportunities and successes that await them.
“With business, it’s not just about making a company among the best in its field,” he says, “but rather making a company the best in the world. It’s the same with the law school. I want to see it become not just one of the best law schools, but one of the best educational institutions, period. The excitement in doing that and the opportunity to bring my legal, business, development, organizational and financial skills to bear on the college’s growth is why I’m honored to be able to help MSU-DCL provide young lawyers the best training they can get.”
Haley uses his own training, his education at DCL, and his experience teaching mergers and acquisitions at the law school, to prepare tomorrow’s lawyers for the challenges, opportunities and successes that await them.
In a commencement address to the 1993 DCL graduating class, Haley said: “Someone once said that to just keep on keeping on is sometimes an act of courage in life. I watch the world, and I worry about men and women functioning far below the level of their possibilities. First-rate work is glorious, sound, excellent work.”
Education is the best provision for age
If you happen to catch up to Clifton Haley…if you want a few minutes with him to discuss the law school’s direction…if you’d like to explore with him the convergence of law and justice with history, society, commerce and relationships…if you, like Ford, have a “better idea” that you’d like to run past the new president—well, just know that you’ll have to put aside any illusions you may have about this 71-year-old “retiring” from anything.
Recently, the MSU-DCL alumnus was up to his elbows in Aristotle in preparation for finals at MSU. No, he’s not teaching. Rather, the 71-year-old law school president is a student—MSU’s oldest.
“With my involvement as a trustee and my advocacy of the law school’s affiliation with MSU—and with three daughters who all graduated from the university—I decided I’d like to have green and white on my credentials, too.” He’s close—just six credits shy of earning a BA at the College of Arts and Letters, with a major in philosophy.
He says he challenges 19-year-old grandson, Eric Pender—also an MSU undergrad—on grades. He challenges other students with the fastest long-distance commute to campus. No buses or bicycles for him, though; he flies his twin-turbine Super King Air in from Drummond Island in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula for law college meetings and twice-weekly classes.
Independent to the core, Haley took his first flying lesson on Independence Day—July 4, 1963. Four decades later, he’s still soaring to new heights.
Headings are from Aristotle (384-322 BC). Sources: Metaphysics, Book I, Chapter 1; Poetics, Chapter 6; Nicomachean Ethics, Book X, Chapter 7; Nicomachean Ethics, Book I, Chapter 1; Nicomachean Ethics, Book X, Chapter 9; Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Book V, Section 17.
Carolyn Haley Takes Flight in Learning and Life
Smooth landings, shared journeys
MSU-DCL’s president isn’t the only Haley who takes flight from time to time. Clifton Haley’s wife Carolyn is also a pilot.
As a young girl, Carolyn says, she always thought about flying—even cut out pictures of military jets and put them in scrapbooks. But coming of age when girls’ career choices were generally limited to teaching or nursing, she put aside the childhood dream and tossed the scrapbooks. Years later, after earning her teaching degree from Eastern University—subsequently earning a master’s and a specialist’s degree there, too—she revived the dream, earned her license and instrument rating, and took to the air in a single-engine Bonanza.
She admits to liking takeoffs better than landings, but in life, her landings are noteworthy, typically delivering her to the halls of learning—in the Detroit area as an elementary school teacher and reading director, at Chicago’s Cabrini Green inner-city school as an assistant principal, at the YMCA, and at local colleges, where she helped future teachers spread their own wings.
Her mother inadvertently helped Carolyn land on her feet in another endeavor. Mrs. Borth was a professional contester, writing—and winning—recipe and jingle contests. On an eight-year winning streak, she shared the winner’s table with Carolyn who, in 1972, sat beside an acquaintance who, as it turns out, was Clifton’s girlfriend. The woman was ready to marry, Clifton wasn’t, and she offered up her boyfriend as a blind date for Carolyn. The rest, as they say, is history.
“We both have a high energy level, and both of us value education,” she says. She conceded the chef’s hat to Clifton early on, willingly serving as sous chef and cleanup cook. “Like everything else he does, he does it to perfection.”
The couple share more than a passion for flying and learning. Three Haley daughters, five grandchildren, snowmobiling, cross-country skiing, golfing, gardening, bicycling, and Tootsie Roll—a chocolate-colored Lab—
fill the couple’s days on Drummond Island. Every few weeks, hungry for a “noise” fix, Carolyn heads to their Chicago condo.
Her blind date having succeeded simultaneously to presidency of the law school and undergrad status at MSU, Carolyn calls Clifton her “student prince.”
“I’m very, very proud of him. He’s always had his fingers in several pies at once, wearing a lot of hats. But he never just sits down as a member of a group; he’s there as a leader, a true leader. As for education and learning, he’s like a dog with a bone. He pursues a thing until it is achieved, and does it until he sees he’s done his very best.”
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