LANSING – Lori Buiteweg, the incoming president of the State Bar of Michigan, will lead a contingent of SBM leaders on a tour of the Upper Peninsula legal community Sept. 28-30.

The annual tour gives U.P. bar associations, the media and the public an opportunity to meet the person leading the State Bar during its 81st year.

The tour will include stops in Sault Ste. Marie, Escanaba, Iron Mountain, Ironwood, Hancock and Marquette.

Buiteweg, who will be sworn in as SBM president on Oct. 8 in Novi, is a shareholder at Nichols, Sacks, Slank, Sendelbach & Buiteweg P.C. in Ann Arbor, where she focuses her practice on matrimonial law.

She will lead an organization of more than 44,000 members that works to improve the administration of justice, promotes the legal profession, and builds public understanding of the legal system. She has been involved in State Bar work for more than a decade and has served on many of its committees and groups.

She was first elected to the SBM Board of Commissioners in 2003 as a State Bar of Michigan Representative Assembly leader and has since served as treasurer, secretary, vice president, and president-elect. She served as chairperson of the Representative Assembly from 2005-06.

Buiteweg is a fellow of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, one of less than 50 in Michigan and 1,600 nationwide. And she is a founding member of the Washtenaw County Eastern Michigan University Legal Resource Center, which helps self-represented litigants find and fill out appropriate forms and navigate courthouse processes.

She has served as president of the Washtenaw County Bar Association and she currently serves as chairperson of the WCBA’s highly successful Constitution Day Project.

She received the 2013 Patriot Award from the Washtenaw County Bar Association for her community service, pro bono representation and education of the public about the U.S. Constitution, and she received the 2012 Citizen of the Year Award from the Michigan Council for Social Studies.

Buiteweg will be accompanied on the tour by incoming State Bar Representative Assembly Vice Chair, Fred K. Herrmann. Herrmann practices law as a member of Kerr, Russell and Weber, PLC, where he focuses on commercial litigation, class action defense, multidistrict litigation, antitrust, patent and other intellectual property litigation, attorney and other professional liability defense and contract disputes.

Other members of the SBM delegation include SBM Commissioner and Upper Peninsula native Victoria Radke; SBM Assistant Executive Director Candace Crowley and SBM Director of Diversity Gregory Conyers.