Before becoming a full-time mediator, Michael spent 38 years at Arnold & Porter in the firm's Complex Litigation practice group.  Michael was a first-chair trial lawyer having tried cases to verdict in many federal and state courts throughout the country and before various arbitration tribunals including FINRA, the American Arbitration Association, and JAMS. Michael represented both plaintiffs and defendants in a wide range of industries and in disputes that covered a vast array of substantive areas. For example, Michael was lead counsel in some of the largest jury trials and arbitrations involving the development of various medications; tried multiple Sarbanes-Oxley whistleblower and retaliation cases to verdict in the financial services industry; tried FINRA arbitrations involving disputes between financial institutions and former employees; tried to verdict a major theft of trade secrets case in the computer software industry; tried to verdict a dispute between a major art auction house and one of its customers; and tried to verdict a dispute between an equipment manufacturer and a consumer. In addition to trials, Michael has resolved an enormous number of cases in a host of industries, including aviation, nuclear power, financial services, computer hardware, computer software, telecommunications and pharmaceuticals.  The breadth of Michael's practice touched on virtually every industry and almost every type of dispute.

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Michael believes that litigation should be a last resort and he devoted much of his private practice to alternative dispute resolution, and in particular mediation, both as an advocate and as a neutral, achieving an extraordinarily high success rate. Michael retired from Arnold & Porter in 2026.