Michelle’s practice focuses on real estate development, natural resources and public lands law with an emphasis on development of state trust lands and on the exploration, permitting and production of oil and gas.
Michelle rejoins Lear & Lear after spending 14 years as Senior Legal Counsel for the State of Utah School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration, an agency responsible for the management of nearly 3.5 million acres of surface and mineral estate throughout the State of Utah. Michelle was SITLA’s lead attorney for the agency’s real estate development projects. She negotiated and was involved in dozens of large-scale master planned communities in northern and southern Utah. Her projects also included a variety of other complex real property transactions, including land sales, land and mineral exchanges, commercial leases, industrial leases, easements, transportation projects, environmental mitigation projects, and planning and development agreements.