Judge Chris Christenson. His Path to the Bench.

State of MI Archivist 0:07

Good morning. This is Arthur Bush, and you're listening to Radio Free Flint. And we have a great, a great podcast coming up for a change.

SPEAKER_00 0:16

Chris Christensen, it's all yours, man. Well, I grew up in the city of Flint. I graduated from Flint Southwestern. Hung out on the South Side. Went to U of M Flint and worked my way through undergraduate as a originally as an appraiser, but then I was a carpenter. And then I went to law school at Cooley and I worked my way through law school as a construction superintendent and journeyman carpenter. Both. Oh yeah. I used to, anyway. I used to be a journeyman. So I was out of a Union Carpenter out of local 1234 out of Detroit. United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners.

State of MI Archivist 0:48

Do you think that experience gave you a boost when you started practicing law?

SPEAKER_00 0:52

You know what's interesting about that? It changed my perspective about work because we worked hard. We got to work at six in the morning in the summertime and we worked until three or four in the afternoon in the blazing heat, and you just had stuff to get done. You had to get it done. Going to school full-time, I went to school all year round to go to law school in order to be able to do all that. When I was working between school and work, I was probably putting in 60 hours a week. So when I went out on my own, putting in 50 or 60 hours a week didn't seem that bad. I didn't have travel time. My body wasn't beat up. I wasn't out in the elements in the freezing cold or the blistering sun. So yeah, it helped a lot. That's great.

State of MI Archivist 1:28

And then you you went to Flint Southwestern uh high school or academy?

SPEAKER_00 1:33

Oh, both, actually. I was at the transition. Tell us a little bit about your journey with that. Yeah, I think it's important to kind of give back, especially to our profession, because it is a profession, not just a career, it's a profession. But we are what we make it, in my opinion. So if if we don't participate, then we'll have a profession that's sort of hollow. So I always thought that I should participate that way I know what's going on, and that way I can help, you know, I don't know, do my part going forward. So um at a at a very, very beginning started my career. I started participating in the Genesee County Bar Association Young Lawyers events. And then I learned about the state bar Young Lawyers events and I started participating in the state bar Young Lawyers events. And then that just kind of developed. I stayed active in the Genesee County Bar Association and wound up becoming the president. Um, I was the second youngest president in 113-year history at the time. Only Duncan Beagle was younger when he was president. I found out during that year. Uh, and then I wound up getting elected as the uh chairperson for the young lawyers' section of the state bar, which is the largest section of individual sections of the state bar back then. And I've continued that. I stay active with the uh Genesis County Bar Association on various committees, and uh I'm currently on the state bar board of commissioners for the whole state.

State of MI Archivist 2:47

Tell us what they do because I'm sure that most people don't know what the commissioners of the state bar are.

SPEAKER_00 2:52

Okay, so the commissioners of the state bar, there's about 45,000 lawyers, and about 32 lawyers get elected to the to the state bar board of commissioners. So I'm one of the 32 that got elected. And what we do is we meet several times a year and we work on various different projects that have to do with the lawyers in the state. Because we're a self-regulating body, there's all kinds of things that come up that we have to be responsible for or have input on. But we also get input from the Supreme Court. Whenever there's going to be a legislative change or a court will change, they send it over to us to review and uh farm out to our subcommittees, like the real property law section or the criminal law section. Uh we help coordinate all those. Any any response to uh something major like this pandemic, we've been we've had several Zoom calls just like this, where we the last two weeks where we've had to work on uh various issues that are facing lawyers, like the new one that just came out this week. Notaries allowing we are allowed currently to notarize something remotely, right? Which has never been never been allowed before.

State of MI Archivist 3:54

So well, Chris, uh in terms of your practice, how has it impacted your your particular practice area?

SPEAKER_00 4:02

Well, it's been it's been twofold. The the real estate transactions, actual real estate agents are have been told that they are not considered essential. So they're not showing houses for sale or buying or selling houses right now. But title companies were considered essential, so title companies are open. So it's created this weird, there there is some weirdness now. So we're not revealing a lot of purchase documents at the present time. I just had a big commercial transaction fall completely apart two weeks ago because of this and the uncertainty in the market. Um, but on the criminal side, interestingly enough, we're doing a lot by remote. I just did a video, a Zoom, like we're doing now, a Zoom sentencing on Tuesday. So it it was very, very interesting to see how they set that up. They put the defendant in the jail in one of the booths, and they had the court in the actual courtroom so they'd record it still and create a record. And then I was at my office doing it from my office. So if you can imagine, there's a difficulty there because we had to tell the defendant if the defendant wanted to speak to me directly in private, which they have a right to do, the judge and the prosecutor would have had to get off the call, the deputy would have had to have uh muted what they could hear so that I could talk to my client directly, then we would have to notify the court to get back on the call. That was the only way to do it if we had to do that. Luckily, we didn't have to do that in our case, but a lot of issues to work on.

State of MI Archivist 5:24

Courts are closed, I understand.

SPEAKER_00 5:25

For the most part, district court is almost completely shut down, I think. Other than they're doing some PCCs because people have rights. So if you got arrested over the weekend for something, you know, you have the right to have your bail set, you've got the right to have your uh PCC within the first 21 or within seven days, I think, on the PCC and then 21 days for the preliminary exam, but there's good cause to not have the exam right.

State of MI Archivist 5:48

So right now, uh it's a big slowdown, which isn't so bad for a lawyer to catch up, right?

SPEAKER_00 5:53

Yeah, we've been doing an awful lot of paperwork from both.

State of MI Archivist 5:55

So good for you. Now, what about new clients? Can you meet new clients through through uh traditional methods uh or uh we're not meeting any new clients?

SPEAKER_00 6:05

Uh we're we're we're talking to them on the phone, we are doing phone interviews with people. Uh we we have been retained by some new clients, but it's been we've never met, we have not physically met them. Uh we're discouraging any, we're not actually open for any face-to-face contacts, so it's all video or phone.

State of MI Archivist 6:23

I I argued a case in uh year escapes me now, uh 2003, I believe it was, and got sworn in before this the Supreme Court of the United States and watched and and watched me argue this case, which I was quite surprised by. Uh tell us about that and how that came about.

SPEAKER_00 6:43

Well, interestingly enough, I didn't back then I just started out and I didn't know any of those people. So I didn't get sworn in then. I didn't go with any group. I went on my my own time, my wife and I at the time. We we went we set up our own plans, we went and watched the we did run into people from the bar and got to know a few people from that. If I remember there was uh a meeting at the hotel uh the night before the argument, but my wife and I just went to watch because it was our prosecutor arguing in front of the United States Supreme Court, it was huge, and so it was something that was interesting, and we went to go check it out. Since then I've been back, I got sworn in later with the Bar Association, and then I got to go back again and make the motion to have people sworn in in front of the Supreme Court. So I've been back there three times, it's been it's been a very good experience.

State of MI Archivist 7:30

Yeah. Uh well it was a little scary experience for me. I'm sure it was a lot more fun watching uh you know, you don't appear in front of the Supreme Court very often, or if ever, most lawyers don't. Chris actually got his great start in the Genesee County prosecutor's office as an intern.

SPEAKER_00 7:47

And uh he interviewed me and he asked me about you know why I wanted to do my internship there and if I wanted to be a prosecutor, and I told him no, I I wasn't sure that I really wanted to be a prosecutor, but I want to see how it worked from the inside, and I was very interested about about learning and blah blah blah. And he just said, Son, that's the wrong answer. Next time somebody asks you why you want to be here, you tell them that you want to be a prosecutor. And he started laughing. He said, I'm just kidding. He said, We'll go ahead and we'll take you. You can be you can do your internship with us. Uh and so I realized then that you know, uh sometimes that forthrightness needs to be tempered a little bit, but uh it was pretty funny. He then um assigned me over to the um drug unit. And back then in the drug unit, uh John Green was our our head, and uh and we had Janet McLaren and Tony Tomashewski and a bunch of others, Tandy Phillips that are still around all the time that I I still work with. And uh it was a great experience learning from those guys. I got to do under that court rule, I can't remember if it escapes me right now, but under court rule, interns are allowed to do preliminary exams, they can do small things as long as they're supervised. So I got to actually do preliminary exams on drug cases uh before I even graduated, and it was a tremendous learning experience. Let's switch gears for a second.

State of MI Archivist 8:57

Uh, you have had a long time dream of observing on the bench. Where did that start? And what's that all about?

SPEAKER_00 9:03

You know, I think it was probably as I've been in practice, and I've been in practice for 20 years, so as I've been in practice, it's picked up steam, and I I've had the opportunity with the kind of work that I do to practice all around the state. I even had a jury trial in the middle of February in the UP. And so I've had the opportunity to see really, really great judges, and also seeing judges that I thought could maybe do a little better job. And and so as you sit back and you learn from all of them, you know, uh things that you could do better and things that you hadn't thought of that they did great, and you think, well, you know what? I think I have a very I have a very balanced personality. I don't get too high, I don't get too low, and I think fairness is a is a guiding principle all the time. And I think that's what we kind of need more on the bench is if you were but I don't know the best way to play to say it, but you want somebody who's gonna be fair and impartial, that's the entire goal of the job, and so I just think that I would be good at that.

State of MI Archivist 9:52

You you ran for judge uh two years ago. I don't remember when what year that was.

SPEAKER_00 9:57

2018, it was two years ago.

State of MI Archivist 9:59

What did you learn from that race?

SPEAKER_00 10:01

Well, that was an interesting race because there were two open seats, and there had not been two open seats in our county in years and years and years, so that was a lot of work. We worked very, very hard, and on our side, we made a conscious effort to be extremely clean. We didn't we didn't engage in any of the negativity, that's just not my personality, I guess. So we didn't do any of that, and uh I I thought it went fairly well. We we missed the seat by three percent. I came in third place, there were two seats, and I was right behind the two winners by three percent.

State of MI Archivist 10:32

Who were the winners that year?

SPEAKER_00 10:34

Elizabeth Kelly and Brian DeCal, and they're both doing great, they're both doing really well, so that worked out well for them, but uh it it's difficult to come that close. So that's why I'm trying it. Again, there's one open seat right now. Uh Judge Steeley's retiring at the end of this year.

State of MI Archivist 10:49

You you cannot help but have uh it's a good experience running for judge, isn't it? Oh, it's a lot of work though. So now you're thinking about running for judge again?

SPEAKER_00 11:00

I am running actually. I made an announcement at the end of February. Well, we uh we announced in February, we got very organized. We still have a lot of our organization from the last race. Um, then we went out and got all of our petitions signed. You have to have a minimum of a thousand petitions and a maximum of two thousand. So we turned in all two thousand signatures back on March 5th, and we started focusing on the next phase, which would have been uh door-to-door meeting with the public and fundraisers. But this Corona thing has shut both of those things down. Um, there's no way that we could go door to door. Obviously, it's not gonna allow, but we it just wouldn't wouldn't be healthy right now to go door to door. And then at the same time, we can't hold any events. So it's we've been getting, we've been focused on getting more organized for when things finally do open up, but uh it's a holding pattern right now. Young lawyer section of the state bar is the largest section of the state bar. So I started participating in that, and I was there for about a year and a half or so, too, and then I got elected as the chairperson. And part of why I got elected is that every year we do a program. We were all encouraged to do a program in our area, whatever our area was. And the program I did was called Lead the Cherry, and I got the idea from Texas, but I modified it. And so what we did was, and Tony Vance, I member volunteered, trying to think of who else helped me back then. But so what we did was we invited from various schools come down to Masonic Temple, they could tour the Masonic Temple, tour the district court, and tour the circuit court. We broke them into groups, and then we had them watch a video where half of them were prosecutors and half of them were the jury, and half were the other or third or third for the defense. And um, they watched it and then they had to make up their own verdicts, and they were not allowed to talk about it after they each watched the video because we broke them into groups, and then we had lunch at Masonic, and then they had to talk about they had to give us their verdicts and we had to talk about it. And it was amazing their verdicts were not the same. And so we won two national awards for that, uh, actually. And then the next year I was elected as the chair, and we did that for about four or five years. But uh, when I aged out, nobody picked it up to continue the program.

State of MI Archivist 13:13

You got too old to be a young lawyer?

SPEAKER_00 13:15

Yeah, you have to be uh under 36 or less than five years in practice.

State of MI Archivist 13:20

So what is it about Flint? You you're born and bred and educated in a public school. I forgot to ask you where you went to college. Um what is it about our city that you think has helped you in your career and and and in your professional endeavors? Uh what is it about this this place that, in light of all the problems, has has created such uh a monoclonal success?

SPEAKER_00 13:49

You know what I think, honestly, it's this city. If you if you're from here and you've come up through the city, the sense of resilience that the city itself has. This city has seen so many trials and tribulations forever, for years. I I growing up in the 70s, the 80s, the 90s, now there's just right all the way up to the to the water crisis. So the city always finds a way to survive. And that resilience, I think, translates to anybody and everybody who's come through here. You you just feel it. So in regular work and what I do, there's a resilience that you know if you just work hard, you're going to get through whatever it is that we're facing. Just try your best and work hard. You know what I like right now? I love the mural project. You know, you now the downtowners are be resurgent in the last eight or nine years. But but last year, that mural project just caught fire, and that thing is amazing. I don't know if you've had a chance to drive by and check them out, but it is a very, very, very cool project. Yeah.

State of MI Archivist 14:51

So who's well, you'll have to put me in touch with the people that are doing it. I'd love to interview them.

SPEAKER_00 14:56

Um, you know, Charles Boyke, Charles Boyke, I don't oh yeah, I don't know what his role is, but he definitely has something to do with it. But uh he has got a lot of good information. But if you Google it, you'll find the details. But my last Labor Day, my wife and I, my my daughter, we drove around for three hours. And at the time, I think it was only 60 murals, and I think they're close to a hundred murals now. But we took three hours and drove all around the city checking out the murals, and the artwork is fantastic, it's beyond fantastic. I mean, it there's some really impressive things out there right now.

State of MI Archivist 15:26

Well, send some pictures to me. I'll use them uh in our uh in our website. I have a ton. I will. Chris, uh, it's great to have you with me. I really appreciate you taking the time uh on this uh Saturday. Um and uh I wish you the best in your endeavors uh as you run for judge and as you continue to serve uh uh the state of Michigan and your activities with the state bar. I wish you again the best of luck. I appreciate it. Thanks, Art. Thanks for having me. Okay, goodbye. Uh this is Arthur Bush and Chris Christian. Chris Christensen, attorney from Flint, Michigan. And this is Radio Free Flint.