As deputy legal counsel in the Executive Office of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, James Madison College alumna Marissa Kreutzfeld is part of a team that applies a legal lens to nearly every function of the administration. Some issues unfold over an extended period of time. Others need to be resolved within a few hours.
“Every day looks very different because every day in the state looks very different,” she explained.
The role represents a side of legal practice students may not immediately picture when considering a career in law: advising an administration from within government. While the Michigan Department of Attorney General represents state government in court, the governor’s legal team serves as in-house counsel for the administration.
If the governor or her administration is considering an action, Kreutzfeld and her colleagues help answer the legal questions surrounding it: Is it legally permitted? What authority would it require? What are the implications of signing a bill or issuing an emergency order? How should the administration respond to litigation in which the governor is named?
The office also advises on judicial appointments, reviews legislation, participates in the budget process and works with state departments as legal questions arise.
“Pretty much any time something happens in the state where the governor is involved, one of us is giving legal advice to the administration about how to handle that,” Kreutzfeld said.
There is no typical day in the role. Kreutzfeld’s portfolio has included judicial appointments, legislative review, labor issues and emergencies. The rhythm of the work changes with the Legislature, the budget cycle and events across the state. A question may disappear and return a year later. Another issue may be settled within a few hours.
“I’ve worked on so many interesting legal issues,” Kreutzfeld said. “If I don’t like something, tomorrow will look different.”
Kreutzfeld’s route into government law began with the same interests that first led her to James Madison College: politics, research and writing.
As a JMC student, she majored in Social Relations & Policy and Political Theory & Constitutional Democracy, with a minor in Women’s & Gender Studies. She was drawn to SRP’s combination of history, politics and social policy and to the wide range of issues studied by its faculty. PTCD offered a way to pursue a longstanding interest in political thought while beginning to consider law school.
Her interest in law became especially clear in a constitutional democracy course, taught by JMC Prof. Constance Hunt, that examined American history through Supreme Court decisions.
“That class probably is the reason why I went to law school,” Kreutzfeld said. “I really liked case law.”
While she didn’t pursue a traditional pre-law path as an undergraduate student, Kreutzfeld gravitated toward courses focused on courts, constitutional questions and legal reasoning.
“I loved to write. I loved to read. I really enjoyed doing the research paper,” she said. “Law school also felt like a way where I could take what I thought were my abilities and actually do something with them.”
After graduating from JMC in 2014, Kreutzfeld continued directly to Michigan State University College of Law.
Through her JMC coursework, she had learned how to work through dense material, identify its central ideas and build an argument. The subject matter did not always transfer directly to her legal courses, but the habits did.
“I don’t think I would have done half as well as I did in law school without Madison,” she said.
Kreutzfeld knew she was interested in public service but was still learning what that could mean within the law. During law school, she interned with a federal appellate court in Lansing and with the American Civil Liberties Union in Chicago. She served as president of a reproductive rights student organization and focused much of her research on reproductive rights law.
After graduation, her early career unfolded through a series of appellate court positions. She joined the staff attorney’s office at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in Atlanta, then returned to Michigan to clerk at the Michigan Court of Appeals. A friend from law school later encouraged her to apply for a clerkship with Michigan Supreme Court Justice Elizabeth Welch.
At the state’s highest court, Kreutzfeld worked on significant state and federal constitutional questions. Among the cases she worked on was People v. Parks, which concerned mandatory life-without-parole sentencing for people who committed first-degree murder at age 18. The Michigan Supreme Court concluded that 18-year-olds must receive an individualized sentencing process before such a sentence can be imposed.
The questions brought Kreutzfeld back to theories of incarceration she had studied in SRP and continued to consider throughout law school and her court work.
“I thought it was a very full-circle moment for me,” she said.
When that clerkship approached its end, she faced another transition. After spending nearly six years in courts, moving into a different kind of legal practice felt uncertain.
Then a position opened in the governor’s legal office.
Kreutzfeld applied and made the move from analyzing government decisions after they had produced a legal dispute to advising on legal questions before the administration acted.
The transition required her to use familiar legal skills in unfamiliar ways. She still needed to read closely, conduct research and evaluate competing interpretations. But she now had to do it more quickly, often in collaboration with other attorneys and members of the administration.
As the administration begins to wind down, Kreutzfeld is now considering what might come next. She expects another role in state government might follow and remains interested in in-house legal work, but she had not settled on a specific position.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do after this because I don’t know that anything’s going to be quite this exciting,” she said.