"MSU's newest board member is already making an impression" Detroit Free Press 12/20/19
Her commute might be a little longer than yours — it involves an airplane — but Renee Knake isn't complaining.
A law school professor at the University of Houston and the mom of children she didn't want to uproot from East Lansing, Knake hasn't let distance keep her from her obligations in Houston or her parenting responsibilities at home.
She might be back and forth more in the coming months. Knake was appointed last month to the Michigan State University Board of Trustees, where she landed on one of the most scrutinized boards in all of higher education.
She didn't waste any time in making an impression — she announced at her first meeting she'd be reviewing all 6,000 documents the university claims it doesn't have to turn over to the state attorney general for its Larry Nassar-related investigation of MSU because of attorney/client privilege.
Reading the documents "isn't how I planned to spend my holiday break," Knake told the Free Press in an exclusive, wide-ranging interview five days after her first board meeting, but is part of her philosophy of what a board member should do.
"I was being responsive to the issue most prominent as I was coming into the board," she said. "The role of the trustee is to generally not have to dive so deep into these issues — but to step in when needed.... (and) to make sure the university administration tasked with doing (a task) is doing (it)."
She did caution making it through all the documents could take months.
Born in Springfield, Missouri, Knake's parents moved her to a suburb of Minnesota's Twin Cities at the age of 7. She moved again in sixth grade, this time to a suburb of Kansas City.
Each move was at a "sensitive" time in her life, she said, something that played into her decision to leave her children rooted in East Lansing when her career took her from MSU to the University of Houston in 2016.
She always wanted to be a lawyer
In seventh grade, she wrote an essay in her social studies class about how she wanted to be a lawyer.
She went to college at North Park University in Chicago, a decision influenced in part by her desire to go somewhere safe where she believed she would worry less about sexual assault than other college options. It's a hope she has for other colleges and universities, especially MSU, as well, saying she's hopeful there's a day coming when this factor doesn't have to enter anyone's decision making process.
Knake went on to law school at the University of Chicago, intending to be a lawyer, but not a law school professor. At least that's what she believed for years, until she was visiting her parents this Thanksgiving. That's when her mom found her application essay to law school, in which she wrote not only was she hoping to be a lawyer, she wanted to be a law professor "working on the issues I'm working on today." While there, she did research for Stephen Schulhofer, who did groundbreaking work in the area of consent in sexual relationships.
She went on to work in private practice and as an attorney for the city of Charlottesville, Virginia. While there, she worked on foster care and other issues and was an adjunct professor at a local community college teaching business law.
Issues needing reform
When she moved to Michigan, she was hired as a lecturer in the MSU College of Law and began teaching. She eventually achieved tenure.
A strong pusher for reform in legal practices, she worked during her time at MSU on issues that "in theory were there to protect clients but perhaps didn't do that as fully as they could" or needed reform.
She gives an example: There's a rule saying lawyers shouldn't be partners in a firm with non-lawyers. But it might be helpful to clients if a lawyer was in a firm with a social worker or a physician or some other professional that could help one person all from the same firm. She's also written extensively on lawyer advertising and how to educate people about lawyers.
In addition to legal ethics classes, she also taught in the business school and honors college. A seminar she taught there on women who were shortlisted for a Supreme Court seat but passed over turned into a book she just finished writing.
As the job market for lawyers slumped in 2010 and 2011, she co-founded the ReInvent Law Laboratory for Law, Technology, Innovation and Entrepreneurship in order to help students explore opportunities for law outside of traditional areas.
"I have former students who hold jobs that didn't exist when I was in law school," she said.
Then the University of Houston came calling — recruiting her to become the Joanne and Larry Doherty Chair in Legal Ethics, a rare opportunity for an endowed chair in legal ethics, her specialty.