Mike is a California-based trial and appellate litigator with extensive experience seeking emergency and injunctive relief in affirmative challenges to regulatory enforcement, administrative decision-making, and government action affecting lawful business operations. He is frequently engaged where early strategic decisions determine the outcome—where the agency’s compliance with procedural requirements, the permissible scope of its discretion, and the timing of the legal response are themselves the decisive issues.
In addition to affirmative challenges to government action, Mike has represented businesses and individuals in enforcement proceedings across administrative, civil, and criminal matters, including high profile international investigations into government contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and he has represented numerous witnesses in congressional, Department of Justice, and state regulatory investigations. He has conducted sensitive internal investigations for both companies and public agencies into whistleblower allegations and public allegations of misconduct.
Mike understands that a government investigation or regulatory dispute is never only a legal problem. It consumes leadership attention, delays business decisions, and creates uncertainty across the business. He works to resolve that uncertainty as directly and completely as the matter allows, providing counsel that is specific and actionable, not cautious hedging dressed as advice.
What shapes how Michael approaches these matters is experience that most litigators do not have: he has been on the government’s side of these disputes. As both an Assistant United States Attorney and an enforcement attorney at a federal regulatory agency, he has seen from the inside how government power can be exercised well and how it can be abused. That inside perspective is a different way of reading a situation that allows Mike to move strategically rather than reactively, and to give clients a clear and honest picture of where they stand. He understands how agencies build cases, how enforcement decisions get made, where agencies have real leverage, and where their authority ends. Often, this can reveal how they can be challenged. That experience on both sides of these disputes, pursuing affirmative relief and defending enforcement actions, gives him an understanding of how agencies investigate, how they litigate, and where their cases are strongest and most vulnerable.
Mike has previously been published in the Harvard Business Law Review and is frequently quoted or appears in the media. Mike is also the author of two series of periodic essays on Substack: "On First Principles" features the essential ideas that form the foundations of American government and law and "California Unbound" examines the laws and policies behind California's successes as well as those providing opportunities for reform to unlock our state's full potential. He has served on the boards of nonprofits and is a member of the American Bar Association's Standing Committee on Election Law.
Mike lives with his family in Marin County, California, where he enjoys sailing, kayaking, hiking, coastal adventures, great food, amazing people, and all that our beautiful state has to offer.
The following matters illustrate the range and depth of Mike’s experience. They are not a complete list.
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