STARTING OVER: TERRY J. NOLAN REGAINS LAW LICENSE

Terry J. Nolan is back.

After a bruising seven years in career exile, Muskegon County's
best-known private attorney is about to make a fresh start.

Nolan, 51, regained his long-suspended law license last week. On Nov.
23, he will open a solo practice called Nolan Law Offices, PLLC, at 1
E. Apple.

This week -- for the first time since his cocaine-fueled spinout in a
humiliating glare of publicity in 2002-03 -- Nolan agreed to be
interviewed by a reporter about his experiences.

"I pretty much lost everything," Nolan said. "I blame no one but
myself."

But he says he's ready for his return: clean and sober a day at a
time, humbled by his experiences and eager to get back to what he does
best -- practicing law.

Muskegon attorney Robert Chessman, who recently hired Nolan for his
current job as a law clerk at McCroskey Law, calls him a changed man.
"I knew Terry years ago, and I know Terry today, and he's a different
person today than he was then," Chessman said.

What a long, strange trip it's been. Riding high Early this decade,
Nolan was easily Muskegon County's highest-profile criminal-defense
lawyer, and arguably its most successful.

Quick-thinking, hard-working, charming, Nolan had a knack for getting
jurors to see his clients' point of view. If persuasion is an art,
Nolan was Muskegon's Picasso.

In a 16-year career, he handled countless cases, some of them West
Michigan's most notorious. He won acquittals in more than a few -- no
small feat in a law-and-order community known for hard-nosed juries
and swift guilty verdicts.

His newsworthy acquittals included Steven Clayton Wallace (not guilty
of 10 counts of being Seth Privacky's accomplice in mass murder),
then-Muskegon Heights Police Detective Mel Jordan (not guilty of
sexually assaulting a woman working as a prostitution decoy),
businessman James Crowell (not guilty of threatening a witness in a
drug probe).

Other infamous clients included Bartley Dobben, found guilty but
mentally ill of killing his two small sons in a foundry ladle, and
child-killer Dean Metcalfe in the days before and after Metcalfe's
arrest, before he was charged with the first-degree murder of Andre
Bosse.

Over the years, Nolan won literally dozens of not-guilty jury
verdicts. Clients were acquitted on charges ranging from misdemeanors
like drunk driving and domestic violence, to major felonies including
murder, kidnapping, criminal sexual conduct, causing the death of a
vulnerable adult, robbery and (ironically enough) cocaine delivery and
possession.

Success bred more clients. Clients bred money. Money financed
self-indulgence.

The Crack-Up

Nolan's fall, when it came, came fast and hard.

A crack cocaine bust in July 2002 cost him his law license. A second
in November 2003 cost him his freedom. Between them, they shattered
Nolan's career, his reputation and his finances.

But Terry Nolan's romance with mind-altering substances began long
before that.

Like plenty of suburban kids in the '70s, he and his friends at
Reeths-Puffer High School used drugs and alcohol routinely. "That was
how we celebrated, and that's how we took care of sadness and
depression," he says.

And like plenty of others, Nolan went on to a successful career
anyhow.

The baby of a large, close, high-achieving family, he graduated from
college, worked for three years as a teaching pro at West Shore Tennis
Club, then went to Detroit College of Law. He graduated and passed the
bar exam in 1986, returned to Muskegon to practice and founded his own
firm in 1990. Along the way, he married and started a family.

Nolan's first brush with criminal trouble came in 1992, when he
pleaded guilty to misdemeanor cocaine use committed in 1990. After he
successfully served a year on probation, his record was wiped clean,
leaving no conviction. "I had no idea I had a drug or alcohol
problem," he says of that period.

Nolan says he stayed sober for several years after that, but then
returned to drinking alcohol and snorting powder cocaine. He says he
stopped drinking permanently on July 4, 1998, but the cocaine use continued.

Things got worse.

By 1999, he began what was to become a repeated round of trips to
treatment centers. In 2001, his 17-year marriage ended in divorce. In
late 2000, he vanished from the public eye for months, generating a
spate of wild, widespread rumors including reports he was dead. He
resurfaced in February 2001, stating in a letter to The Chronicle --
summarized in a front-page story -- that he had been dealing with a
"substance abuse problem" and was, at that time, in recovery. It
didn't last.

Because his powder-snorting was beginning to cause nosebleeds, Nolan
says, he started intermittently smoking crack -- cocaine's most
concentrated, addictive form. "I never used it for a very long period
of time," he says of crack. "It ate me up so fast."

Yet through it all, his busy and mostly successful career continued.
Because of that, "I fooled myself," Nolan says.

He says he took any case he was offered, no matter how many he was
already handling. "I couldn't say no to people," he says. At one time,
he says, he was handling more than 500 files. Sometimes, with
drug-induced energy, he would get up at 4 a.m., then stay up three
nights working.

Hitting Bottom

The evening of July 31, 2002, it all collapsed at the end of a
multiday crack binge.

By that time -- a day after two Muskegon judges had removed him from
multiple cases for missing court dates -- "I knew that I was in need
of help," Nolan says. He had already enrolled in a four-month
residential treatment program that he says he planned to enter the
next morning. He had turned over his cases to his law partner, his
bank accounts to his secretary.

It was too late. Around 10 p.m., police burst into a Norton Shores
home Nolan was visiting, about to use crack with a friend and an
undercover agent. The attorney was arrested for possession of less
than 25 grams of cocaine, a felony, and taken to jail. The next day,
Nolan showed up shackled for arraignment in the same Muskegon
courtroom where he had so often stood up with clients.

The eventual upshot was a guilty plea, a sentence from a Kent County
judge to two years on probation -- and an 18-month suspension of
Nolan's law license.

Again, things got worse.

He says he tried to sell some of his assets and couldn't. Two weeks
after his arrest, he filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, according to U.S.
Bankruptcy Court records. After working a few months as a loan officer
for a Grand Rapids mortgage company, he left to find other employment
but couldn't. By the fall of 2003, "I was almost living out of my car
in Grand Rapids."

Then he got a job at a Muskegon County car dealership. After some 15
months sober, he says, he used his first paycheck to buy crack. "It
was a pretty brief relapse," he says -- his last illegal drug use to
this day, he says -- but it was enough.

On Nov. 10, 2003, he was arrested at a Muskegon Heights home during a
drug raid. He didn't have cocaine on him, but his urine tested "dirty"
for the drug, so he was charged with violating probation and with
cocaine use -- ordinarily a misdemeanor, but upgraded to a felony
because it was a second drug offense. This time, he didn't avoid jail.
After pleading guilty, he was sentenced in July 2004 to six months
behind bars, plus additional probation time that lasted until 2006.

He served the first three months in the Muskegon County Jail in "the
block," the second three in the lower-security work release section --
returning to work in mortgage sales, this time for a Muskegon company.

He kept doing that after his release. Practicing law was not an
option: the Michigan Bar Association added three years to his license
suspension.

"It was a very depressing time," Nolan says. "My family was doing the
'tough love' thing. I'm glad they did that. I have a great family, and
it was embarrassing for them. None of them deserved it. I let
everybody down, and there was a lot of guilt and depression." And,
with a drastically reduced income, lack of money continued to be a
problem. Debts remain.

But this time, he says, he stayed clean and sober, attributing it to a
reliance on God, active participation in recovery programs and close
contact with comrades in recovery. The road back In February 2007, the
earliest possible date, Nolan met with the state bar's Lawyers and
Judges Assistance Program to see about reapplying for his law license.
A lengthy investigative and supervision process began, including
random weekly drug testing, daily recovery meetings, interviews with
Nolan and with people who know him, and monthly meetings between Nolan
and a bar representative.

In October 2008, Nolan got a new job as an intake worker with West
Michigan Therapy, a Muskegon substance abuse agency. In that job, he
interviewed and did drug testing of people with drug and alcohol
problems. Executive Director Louis E. Churchwell was impressed: "He
has a great love of people, and it shows," Churchwell said. "I think
he actually helped a lot of people break their denial."

Finally, in March 2009, after a hearing before the Attorney
Disciplinary Board, Nolan was reinstated to practice law, subject to
passing the summer 2009 bar exam. He quit the West Michigan Therapy
job, moved into a friend's home in Lansing and began 11 weeks of
12-hour-a-day cramming.

The upshot, which he just learned last month: He passed with a higher
score than in 1986, when he was a 28-year-old fresh out of law school.

With that, Nolan arranged to set up his solo practice, aided by loans
from investors. His practice will be mostly criminal defense and
divorce, with some personal-injury work, he says.

"My attitude will be a lot different" toward clients, he said -- more
empathy, an impulse to share his experience. "I've been through jail,
divorce, custody proceedings. I've experienced being a criminal defendant."

"My mission in my return and getting a 'second chance' to practice law
is to make amends to all whom I've hurt by my behaviors," Nolan said
in a written "personal statement." "I will attempt to live, trusting
God, cleaning up my own backyard and helping others."

Churchwell wishes his ex-employee and friend well and praises his work
to date. "I know that to whom much is given, much is required,"
Churchwell said. "The fall that he had was a lot farther and a lot
harder.

"And for him to pull it together and come back, that makes a loud
statement. And I think that that's good for the whole recovering
community. They need to have those success stories."