Lansing,
Michigan
Joan P. Vestrand serves as dean of students and as chair of the law school’s Professional Responsibility department. Dean Vestrand formerly served as associate dean of the law school’s Ann Arbor and Auburn Hills campuses, after serving as an assistant campus dean and as an acting dean of Students and Professionalism. She teaches Personal and Professional Responsibility, Legal Ethics in the Digital Space, and Getting to Excellence, a course that focuses on the connection between ethics, attitude, and success. Before joining the law school, Dean Vestrand served for more than a decade as a state ethics prosecutor investigating and prosecuting allegations of professional misconduct against Michigan lawyers and judges. She then entered private practice as a partner and shareholder at Moore Vestrand & Pozehl, PC, where she concentrated her practice on lawyer disciplinary defense, legal ethics, the representation of law school graduates in state bar character and fitness proceedings and serving as an expert witness in legal malpractice cases, a role she continues in today. Dean Vestrand is a former member of the State Bar of Michigan Representative Assembly, the policy making arm of the Michigan state bar. She is a member of the state bar’s Special Committee on Professionalism and Civility, where she serves as chair of the Materials subcommittee. Dean Vestrand serves on the State Bar’s Standing Committee on Character and Fitness and as a hearing panelist in lawyer disciplinary cases. She is also a past chair of the state bar’s Special Committee on Grievances and its Law Practice Management section and served on the state bar’s Grievance Committee and Annual Meeting Committee. Professor Vestrand served for several years as cochair of the Federal Bar Association’s Law School Initiatives Committee. She is a frequent lecturer on legal ethics and the importance of ethical behavior at the state and national level. A named fellow of the National Institute for Teaching Ethics and Professionalism, she was one of three national finalists for the 2006 Teaching Excellence Award sponsored by the ABA Center for Professionalism and the Commission on Chief Justices. Professor Vestrand is also a fellow of the American Bar Foundation, the Michigan Bar Foundation, the Oakland County Bar Foundation, and the George Romney Institute for Political Science at Adrian College. In 2008, Professor Vestrand received the State Bar of Michigan’s Champion of Justice Award in recognition of her work in the field of legal ethics and her programs to benefit disadvantaged youth.
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