Professor Ted Becker is a clinical professor of law and the director of the Legal Practice Program.

Prior to joining the Law School faculty as a clinical assistant professor in 2000, Becker practiced with Dickinson Wright in Lansing, Michigan, specializing in telecommunications arbitrations and other administrative agency proceedings. He also has substantial appellate experience in general corporate litigation, both with Dickinson Wright and as a sole practitioner. He was previously an adjunct professor at Thomas M. Cooley Law School, teaching an upper-level course in litigation skills, including discovery and motion practice, as well as the practical business aspects of law firm operation.

Becker has authored or co-authored articles in the Michigan Bar Journal, Duquesne Law Review, Legal Writing, The Second Draft, and Michigan Defense Quarterly, and he is the editor of the Future of Law column about legal education in the Michigan Bar Journal. He frequently presents at academic legal writing and transactional drafting conferences. He is the faculty organizer of the Law School's Transactional Law Competition, held for the first time in fall 2015. Becker is a member of the executive committee of the Institute of Continuing Legal Education in Ann Arbor and was the chair of the committee in 2014–2015. In addition, he is the co-chair of the Association of Legal Writing Directors/Legal Writing Institute's Joint Survey Committee and was the co-chair of the 2018 LWI Biennial Conference Planning Committee. He received an Association of Legal Writing Directors Outstanding Service Award in 2018. 

Related Information

Areas of Interest

Education

  • University of Michigan, BA

  • University of Illinois College of Law, JD, summa cum laude, Order of the Coif, University of Illinois Law Review, articles editor

Recent Courses

Featured Scholarship

  • Legal Writing and Research
"Using Transactional Practice Competitions to Introduce Students to Key Deal-Making Skills"
Michigan Bar Journal
  • Legal Writing and Research
"What Will (Or Might?) Law School Look Like This Fall?: Teaching in the Midst of a Pandemic"
Michigan Bar Journal
  • Legal Writing and Research
"Transferability: Helping Students and Attorneys Apply What They Already Know to New Situations (Part 1)"
Michigan Bar Journal
  • Legal Writing and Research
"Transferability: Helping Students and Attorneys Apply What They Already Know to New Situations (Part 2)"
Michigan Bar Journal
See All Scholarship

Activities

Co-counsel for Plaintiffs in two civil rights cases currently pending at the Michigan Supreme Court, Johnson v. Vanderkooi and Harrison v. Vanderkooi, raising Fourth Amendment challenges to the "photo and print" procedures of the City of Grand Rapids as applied to juveniles who are stopped by police and who lack identification.

November 2020

Co-presenter, "The Survey Says: Understanding and Using the New ALWD/LWI Survey," Legal Writing Institute Biennial Conference.

September 2019

Presented "Same as it Never Was: Some Reflections on the Use of History in Classical and Modern Legal Argument" at the Nevada Law Journal Symposium: Classical Rhetoric as a Lens for Contemporary Legal Praxis, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, William S. Boyd School of Law.

July 2018

Co-presenter, "What is the Value of Scholarship?," Legal Writing Institute Biennial Conference, Milwaukee.

July 2018

Co-presenter, "How We Built a Scholarly Working Group Developed to Classical Legal Rhetoric (and How You Can Do the Same Thing with Other Legal Writing Subjects)," Legal Writing Institute Biennial Conference, Milwaukee.

July 2017

Co-presenter, "The Sooner, the Better: How Live Client Work for 1L LRW Students Helps Them Develop a Shared Professional Identity," Association of Legal Writing Directors Biennial Conference, Minneapolis.

July 2017

Presented "Prophets Looking Backward: Lessons for Today's Lawyers from Historical Clashes of Cultural Narratives," 6th Biennial Applied Legal Storytelling Conference, Washington, D.C.

April 2017

Co-presenter, "Some Ideas for Effectively Incorporating Transactional Drafting into the First-Year Legal Writing Class," Southeastern Regional Legal Writing Conference, Gulfport, Florida.

Representative Matters

Johnson v. Vanderkooi and Harrison v. Vanderkooi

Served as co-counsel for plaintiff in a challenge to the "photo and print" procedures of the City of Grand Rapids, Michigan—as applied to juveniles who are stopped by police and who lack identification—and obtained two favorable decisions from the Michigan Supreme Court regarding municipal liability under Section 1983 and unreasonable search and seizure under the Fourth Amendment.