For New Associate Professor, COL Return is a Real Homecoming

For Mary Harokopus, the opportunity to teach legal writing this fall at the Michigan State University College of Law, is, in a very real sense, a chance to come home. It’s been years since the Rochester, Michigan, native has been back in her home state after living most of that time in Texas. But some things never change. Well, almost.

“When I came in for the interview, and stepped outside the airport doors, I was met with what felt like a freezing blast of arctic air and thought, ‘I can’t do this,’” she said with a laugh. “It was pretty funny. The cold was shocking.”

But once she met her colleagues at the College of Law, she warmed up quickly. “I was honored to join Michigan State,” she said. “I just really loved all the people there. It’s a very collaborative environment.”

It will also be a familiar environment as her mother still lives in the area and her husband, William, will be joining the MSU engineering department. “He graduated from the University of Michigan,” she said. “But we’ll hide that.”

Professor Harokopus knows the college well. She earned her Juris Doctorate from the Detroit College of Law in 1994, a year before it began integration into the MSU College of Law. “I actually found a shirt as I was packing that said DCL,” she said. “I’m bringing it with me.”

Professor Harokopus brings years of legal experience to her new role. While pursuing her law degree, she worked as an engineer for Ford Motor Company’s Environmental Compliance Group. She moved to Texas and practiced 15 years in roles from in-house counsel at J.C. Penney to adjunct professor at the University of North Texas Dallas College of Law to visiting Associate Professor of Law at Mercer University in Georgia. She also formed her own firm in the Dallas area.

She was looking for a new opportunity when MSU contacted her. This fall, first-year law students will benefit from her legal writing experience.

“I really love writing,” she said. “I was a technical writer at one point for General Motors and that’s really what legal writing is – it’s technical writing. It underscores everything you do as a lawyer and as a law student. Legal writing is important to the practice of law and passing the bar and making it through law school. It has been something that hasn’t always been a focus area. It’s exciting to join the Research, Writing and Advocacy team at MSU.”