Patrick T. Barone is a Michigan trial lawyer and author who first experienced psychodrama at the Gerry Spence Trial Lawyers College in 2007. In 2010 he began the journey toward certification, and in 2022 he became a Certified as a Trainer, Educator and Practitioner of Psychodrama, Sociometry and Group Psychotherapy (TEP) by the American Board of Examiners (ABE). He is the only Michigan lawyer to hold these Certifications.
In 2015 Mr. Barone co-founded the Michigan Psychodrama Center with Elizabeth Corby, PhD, CP, TEP, and together they provide a wide variety of workshops and training opportunities, including week-long and weekend intensives. They also co-lead a bi-monthly therapy group where psychodrama is a predominant modality and a once monthly psychodrama training group. Patrick has trained extensively with his friend Dr. Peter Pitzele, and currently leads Bibliodrama workshops designed to facilitate subject matter competency and to inspire personal and spiritual growth. He is also the author of a chapter entitled Bringing Scripture to Life with Bibliodrama for Adam Blatner’s book entitled Action Explorations: Using Psychodramatic Methods in Non-Therapeutic Settings , (Paralax Productions, February 23, 2019).
Mr. Barone uses psychodrama and sociometry infused methods in the courtroom; in his role as a business consultant and when teaching trial skills. Finally, he introduces law students to psychodrama in his capacity as an adjunct professor at the Western Michigan University/Thomas M. Cooley Law School.
In his capacity as a business consultant, Mr. Barone has worked with business owners and executives in businesses of all sizes throughout Michigan, including by way of example, TGI Direct, Movimento, AcuMax, A2 Energy Systems LLC, Spry Publishing, Compliance Training Partners/Drakeshire Dental, Booms Stone Co., The Hunter Group, LLC., Vistage Michigan, and dozens of other businesses and executives.
Additionally, Mr. Barone is the principal and founding member of the Barone Defense Firm, headquartered in Birmingham, Michigan with offices also in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He has an “AV” (highest) rating from Martindale-Hubbell, and since 2009 has been included in the highly selective US News & World Report’s America’s Best Lawyers while The Barone Defense Firm appears in their companion America’s Best Law Firms. He has been rated “Seriously Outstanding” by Super Lawyers, rated “Outstanding/10.0” by AVVO and was appointed to the advisory board for the Michigan edition of Leading Lawyers Magazine.
Finally, he is the author of several books on criminal law, gun law and DUI defense, including the well-respected two volume treatise Defending Drinking Drivers (James Publishing), Michigan DUI Law: A Citizen’s Guide, Michigan Gun Law, Armed and Educated, and An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Michigan’s Medical Marihuana Laws”. He has also authored several chapters in West/Aspator Books “Inside the Minds” series on various aspects of DUI discovery and trial practice, and hundreds of related journal articles that have appeared in some of the Nation’s premier Law Journals. For more information or to purchase any of Mr. Barone’s books, please visit his Amazon Author’s Page.
Dr. Elizabeth A. Corby is a Clinical Psychologist who provides evaluation and psychotherapy services to individuals, couples, families and groups. She became a Board-Certified practitioner of Psychodrama, Sociometry and Group Psychotherapy in 2016. In 2020 she reached the highest level of certification as a Trainer, Educator and Practitioner (T.E.P.) of Psychodrama, Sociometry and Group Psychotherapy. Dr. Corby also completed certification as a cognitive behavioral therapist at and is a Diplomate of the Beck Institute for Cognitive Therapy in Philadelphia (1999)
Dr. Corby also maintains a private practice in Birmingham and Royal Oak Michigan where she helps her clients through the transformative processes of psychotherapy. She works holistically with her clients; utilizing a variety of scientifically supportive neuro-behavioral, relational and action methods, including CBT, and psychodrama and various other forms of psychoanalysis and treatment, such as dialectical behavioral, DMDR and mindfulness therapies. In both individual and group settings, Dr. Corby helps her clients integrate mind, body, and spirit thereby providing healing from a variety of challenges including anxiety, depressive disorders, and alcohol and substance use and dependence disorders.
Dr. Corby is also the co-founder of the Michigan Psychodrama Center, where she leads psychodrama workshops for therapists, clients, lay people, lawyers and other professionals. She and Mr. Barone are the only psychodrama trainers in Michigan, offering psychodrama, sociodrama, sociometry and group psychotherapy training groups for therapists and others.
Dr. Corby has an extensive formal and practice-based background in addiction. Dr. Corby’s Ph.D. research involved contingency management of teen substance abuse. This research was ultimately published under the title: Contingency Management Interventions for Treating the Substance Abuse of Adolescents: A Feasibility Study. Another of Dr. Corby’s published studies related to this issue is entitled: Substance abuse risk reduction: Verbal mediational training for children by parental and nonparental models.
As a post-doctoral fellow Dr. Corby continued her research under the title of assistant professor at the WSU medical school’s Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences. This research was under the direction of former NIDA director Dr. Charles Schuster and involved the use of buprenorphine to curb addiction to heroin. This research contributed to its now widespread use. Dr. Corby also developed an adolescent dual diagnosis treatment program while so employed.
Dr. Corby left academia to begin work in the private sector as a clinical director at Henry Ford Maplegrove, a well-known Michigan in-patient chemical dependency treatment center. Since leaving that position, Dr. Corby has been in private practice private practice focusing on the treatment of dual diagnoses and the family system for three decades.