Michael serves as Assistant Dean for Admissions and Financial Aid at Southern Illinois University School of Law. In this role, he is responsible for career services, and diversity and inclusion initiatives for the School of Law. Before his current position, he worked in the field of communications serving as both the Director of the University Communications department for Southern Illinois University Carbondale and the Director of Communications for the Office of the President for the Southern Illinois University system.
Prior to that, he served as the School’s Director of Admissions. During this time, he also held several different positions including the Assistant Dean for Student Affairs, staff attorney in the Legal Clinic, the Externship Program supervisor, and adjunct professor of law.
Michael also established and served as the Project Manager of the Self Help Legal Center. The Center was the first in Illinois to put a comprehensive set of free pro se self-help legal materials on the Internet for the public, and among the first law schools in the nation to use law students to provide free pro se services to the public. He was also a staff attorney at Land of Lincoln Legal Assistance Foundation where he assisted clients in thirteen counties in southern Illinois in consumer, family, housing, disability, and education cases.
Michael received a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science with honors from Southern Illinois University Carbondale, and a Juris Doctor from University of Chicago School of Law.
He has been recognized by the state and national bar having received the Law Student Public Service Award (1993), the Community Service Award (1996), and the Young Lawyer of the Year Award (2000) from the Illinois State Bar Association, and the Louis M. Brown Award for Legal Access (2000) from the American Bar Association.