Leonard M. Niehoff

Niehoff has published more than 100 articles in law reviews and law journals, spanning the fields of constitutional law, evidence, litigation strategy, and ethics. He is also the author or co-author of several books, including Rights and Liabilities of Publishers, Broadcasters, and Reporters (McGraw Hill, 1982); Evidence Law (Foundation Press, 2016); and Free Speech: From Core Values to Current Debates (Cambridge University Press, 2022).

He has been quoted as an authority on legal and policy issues by many major media entities, including the The New York Times, the The Washington Post, the The Wall Street Journal, the Huffington Post, Politico, and National Public Radio. He has written dozens of editorials for leading newspapers and online outlets, including an 11-part educational series for The Detroit News on the Bill of Rights.

Additionally, Niehoff is of counsel to the Honigman law firm and is a nationally recognized practitioner in three different fields: media law, higher education law, and trial and appellate litigation. For more than 35 years, he has represented print, broadcast, and online media entities in libel, privacy, and access cases. This has included assistance with reporting that has won a Pulitzer Prize and a Peabody Award. He also has represented colleges and universities in numerous cases, mostly involving constitutional issues. Among other things, he served on the team that represented the University of Michigan in its historic defense of its affirmative action programs in the Gratz and Grutter cases before the US Supreme Court. He also practices as a litigation and appellate generalist and has argued cases before the Michigan Supreme Court and the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit involving a wide array of tax, energy, and commercial issues. 

He is a member of the Michigan Supreme Court Advocates Guild, the editorial board of the American Bar Association Litigation Journal, and the governing committee of the American Bar Association Forum on Communications Law. In 2021, the Michigan Supreme Court appointed him to co-chair its task force on media access and privacy in online judicial proceedings. He is a Life Fellow of the Michigan and American Bar Foundations and a fellow of the Romney Institute for Law & Public Policy. He also holds a faculty affiliation with the Law School’s Law and Ethics Program and serves as the ethics adviser to the Michigan Innocence Clinic.

In addition to his academic degrees, he studied at the Ecumenical Theological Seminary in Detroit.