Professor Michael Seng, Director of the Fair Housing Legal Support Center and Professor at UIC Law, was selected by the Catholic Lawyers Guild of Chicago as the 2021 recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award for his long career of work focused on discrimination in housing and the Chicago community. Seng was presented the award at the 87th Annual Votive Red Mass of the Holy Spirit, traditionally known as the Red Mass, earlier this month.
During the award presentation, the Catholic Lawyers Guild of Chicago noted Seng’s nearly 40 year teaching career at UIC Law, where he has focused his efforts on ending housing discrimination and promoting civil and human rights locally, nationally and internationally.
Seng’s exemplary legal career has been a stellar example over the years for many students. Before joining the faculty in 1976, he was an associate attorney at Jenner & Block and later became the directing attorney for the Land of Lincoln Legal Assistance Foundation.
Seng also served as a judicial law clerk and directed the legal services office in Cairo, Illinois. He served as a Fulbright professor in Nigeria in 1983-84 and as a visiting professor in the Czech Republic in 1996.
In addition to directing the Fair Housing Legal Support Center, Seng is also Co-Director of the Law School’s Restorative Justice Project. He lectures nationally and publishes extensively on fair housing law. Seng also is the coordinator of UIC Law’s Czech/Slovak Legal Institute.
Seng was previously awarded the Elmer Gertz Human & Civil Rights Award from the Illinois State Bar Association, an award which recognizes a long-standing, continuing and exceptional commitment by an individual or an organization to the protection or advancement of human rights. Seng was also awarded an honorary law degree from Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic. The degree was awarded in recognition of his work with an exchange program between the Law School and Masaryk University.
