Michigan's Trusted FOIA Request Management Firm
FOIA Pro takes the entire burden of processing, coordinating, and redacting public records requests off your desk — so your office can stay focused on running your school, not chasing deadlines.
FOIA requests shouldn't eat your week
Michigan law gives you five business days to issue a written determination — and everything else on your desk still has to get done too. For most districts, there's no dedicated records officer sitting around waiting for the next request. Instead, FOIA work gets absorbed into whatever role has the most flexibility that week, and that means the process is only as reliable as the busiest person's schedule. Multiply that across a full school year, and the risk compounds with every new request.
The clock never stops
A 5-business-day deadline, one allowed extension, and penalties for running late — with no room for a busy week. Board meetings, budget season, and staffing shortages don't pause the statutory clock, and neither does anything else on an administrator's calendar.
It lands on already-full plates
Business officials, admin staff, and superintendents end up doing specialized FOIA work on top of their actual jobs. It's rarely anyone's full-time responsibility, which means it competes for attention with budgets, staffing, and the dozen other things a school day demands.
The stakes are real
Student records, personnel files, and investigations raise the cost of an inconsistent redaction or a missed deadline. A single mistake can mean a legal exposure, a frustrated requester, or a story in the local paper — outcomes no district wants to risk over a process problem.
A FOIA management service built to carry that weight for you
FOIA Pro is a dedicated FOIA request management firm — not software your staff has to learn. We become your FOIA processing team: intake, requester communication, fee estimation, records coordination, and redaction, from the moment a request arrives to the moment it closes.
Your FOIA Coordinator never loses control. Every release still goes through your office for final sign-off. What changes is everything before that — the searching, the drafting, the deadline tracking, the redaction work itself. We carry it. You approve it.
Most of what's marketed to schools in this space is a records-request platform — another dashboard for your staff to log into, learn, and maintain. As a FOIA management firm rather than a software vendor, we take a different approach: you don't get a tool, you get a team. There's nothing new to install, no license to renew, and no learning curve for staff who already have enough on their plates.
Intake & logging — same day
Fee estimate & timeline — within 5 days
Redaction under FERPA & state law
Your office signs off before release
Delivery, archive & documented closure
Four reasons it works
Every deadline, met
Our workflow is built entirely around Michigan's 5-day clock, so your district never risks a missed determination. Every request is logged and tracked from the moment it arrives.
Real time back
FOIA processing is specialized work. When we take it off your plate, your staff gets that time back for the work only they can do.
Speed, with visibility
We move fast and keep you posted at every stage — no black boxes, no surprises, and no wondering where a request stands.
Redaction you can trust
FERPA and Michigan exemption law, precisely applied — with your sign-off before anything is released to the requester.
Built for Michigan schools. Ready to grow with you.
Schools
Our starting focus: K-12 FOIA requests, student record boundaries, and public education transparency. This is where our process was built and refined.
Cities & Counties
HR files, police and investigative records, contract disputes — the same rigor we bring to schools, applied to municipal government.
Universities
High-volume, high-complexity requests and research records, handled with the same documented, deadline-driven approach.
Federal Agencies
Bringing the same rigor to the federal FOIA process as our team's experience continues to grow.
A clear, documented process from day one to delivery
Request comes in
We log it same-day and start the statutory clock, so the deadline is tracked from hour one.
We estimate
Volume, fee, and a completion date — delivered within Michigan's 5-day window, in writing.
We process
Records retrieval, careful redaction, and constant communication with your office along the way.
You approve
Nothing goes out the door without your sign-off — you always have the final word.
We close it out
Delivery, full documentation, and a defensible record of the entire request, archived for your files.
Two founders, over 20 years of FOIA experience combined
FOIA Pro was founded by two partners with a combined 20+ years of FOIA experience at the state, local, and federal levels. That background is what separates a true FOIA management firm from a generic vendor: we've sat on both sides of a records request, we know exactly where exemption questions get tricky, and we've built our entire process around the parts of FOIA compliance that are easiest to get wrong under deadline pressure.
That experience shows up in the details — how quickly we can size a request, how carefully we handle a FERPA-protected file, and how clearly we document every step so your district always has a complete, defensible record on hand, including for questions about your own FOIA activity. It's the difference between hiring a generic service and gaining a genuine, experienced partner in ongoing compliance.
Ready to take FOIA off your plate?
Tell us about your district, and we'll walk you through exactly how FOIA Pro's FOIA management service works for your office — what it costs, how fast we move, and how we'll keep you in the loop. No obligation, no pressure.
Contact UsYour path to easy FOIA request processing starts here!
Here's what actually makes FOIA Pro different — and why districts that try us tend to stay with us.
Real people, not just a platform
A lot of what gets marketed to schools as "FOIA management" is really just software — another login for your staff, another dashboard to maintain, another tool that still requires someone in your building to do the actual work of reviewing, redacting, and responding. FOIA Pro is different. We're not a platform you subscribe to and then have to figure out. We're a team of actual people who take on the work itself: reading the request, tracking down what's responsive, applying the right redactions, and keeping the requester informed. Software can flag a keyword. It can't make a judgment call about a gray-area exemption, or know when a request needs a phone call instead of an email. That's what a real team brings to the table.
We work alongside your staff — not instead of them
Being hands-on doesn't mean taking over. Your records custodians still know where the files live, and your FOIA Coordinator still makes every final call. What we add is a dedicated partner who handles the parts of the process that eat the most time and carry the most risk: fee estimation, requester communication, redaction, and documentation. Your staff stays in the loop at every stage, but they're no longer the ones scrambling to keep the clock from running out. Think of us as an extension of your office, not a replacement for it — we show up ready to do the heavy lifting, and we disappear into the background the moment a request is closed.
Built on real FOIA expertise
Our founders bring a combined 20+ years of hands-on FOIA experience at the state, local, and federal levels. That's not a marketing line — it's the reason we can size a request accurately within Michigan's 5-day window, spot a FERPA issue before it becomes a problem, and produce redactions that hold up to scrutiny. Districts that have tried to handle FOIA internally often discover the hard way that this is a genuinely specialized skill. We've spent years building it, so your district doesn't have to.
Simple to start, easy to stay with
Getting started doesn't require a new system, a training session, or a contract your legal team has to comb through for months. It starts with a conversation: tell us about your district, and we'll walk you through exactly how the process works, what it costs, and what your first request would look like with us handling it. From there, every request follows the same clear, documented path — logged, estimated, processed, approved by your office, and closed out with a complete record. No surprises, no learning curve, and no software license standing between you and a district that's easier to run.