University of Michigan, B.A., Washington University Law School, J.D
Education:
University of Michigan, B.A., Washington University Law School, J.D.
Practice Areas:
Litigation and appeals, including insurance and coverage; Michigan state property, use, sales, Headlee Amendment, and Proposal A tax matters; property and zoning; contract, business, and commercial disputes; state contracting; bar appeals; and character and fitness matters.
Memberships:
State Bar of Michigan, State Bar of Washington
Admissions:
All Michigan state and federal courts; all Washington state courts; U.S. Supreme Court, Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, and U.S. Court of Federal Claims.
Biography:
Frederick M. Baker, Jr. has enjoyed a distinguished and varied career. Most recently, he served for over eight years as a Commissioner for the Michigan Supreme Court, after nearly two decades as a partner at one of Michigan’s leading law firms, Honigman Miller Schwartz and Cohn, where he was a trial and appellate litigator. He began the practice of law at Willingham & Cote, P.C., after three years as an assistant professor at T.M. Cooley Law School, where he taught contracts, civil procedure, and legal writing and research. Before that, he served as law clerk to the late Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals, Robert J. Danhof, a position to which he was promoted after serving as a prehearing attorney in the Court’s Research Division. He began his career as an instructor of law at Wayne Law School, where he taught legal writing and research and appellate advocacy. He has also taught, in an adjunct capacity, both insurance and conflict of laws, at T. M. Cooley Law School and insurance at Michigan State University College of Law.
A graduate of Washington University Law School, in St. Louis, where he received his J.D. and was a member and associate editor of the Urban Law Annual Law Review, and the University of Michigan, where he earned his B.A., he has received numerous awards and honors for his legal writing, scholarship, and contributions to the profession.
Baker was also counsel of record in over three dozen published state and federal appellate decisions, including some that went to the Supreme Court. In all cases that went to the Supreme Court, Baker secured victory after the lower courts had ruled against his clients.
Baker has devoted substantial volunteer efforts to work benefitting the public and the Bar, including service as Chairperson, of the Michigan State Bar Publications and Website Committee, as the Reporter for the Michigan State Bar Grievance Committee, as a Member of the Michigan State Bar Young Lawyers Section Council, as Chair of the Michigan State Bar’s Committee for the Delivery of Legal Services to the Elderly, and as Founder and President of the T. M. Cooley Law School’s Sixty Plus Law Center, Inc., where he has served as a Board member from 1987 to present. With friend John Voelker and Richard F. Vander Veen III, Baker founded the John D. Voelker Foundation, which has provided over 20 scholarships to assist Native Americans to attend law school, and performed other good works. He also serves as a trustee and chairman of the Lansing Area Community Trust and trustee and Treasurer of Lansing’s W.B. and Candace Thoman Foundation, which provide grants to Lansing community and educational projects and programs.
