Michael C. Lewis

The proud son of a Detroit police officer, Mike Lewis earned his law license in 1998 and has since become a well-known, well-respected figure in litigation circles.  His greatest strength is a varied career: Mike has represented both plaintiffs and defendants in all varieties of civil litigation.  He got his start as a member of a small team of Michigan attorneys assigned to represent a Fortune 500 Company in a massive, multidistrict toxic tort case.  This required Mike to help litigate the dozens of toxic tort cases pending in various Michigan state courts at the time, and travel to Washington, D.C., to assist the client’s national coordinating counsel with various projects bearing upon pretrial discovery in different states and in the multidistrict litigation pending in federal court in Philadelphia.  Eventually, Mike assumed control of a large portion of his firm’s insurance defense practice, where he handled everything from small, high-volume no-fault matters to complex general liability claims.  He has litigated claims arising under 42 USC 1983, as well as Michigan’s no-fault, medical malpractice and wrongful death statutes.  As a testament to his versatility, Mike has also litigated matters ranging from fire loss to construction to patent infringement and even one claim implicating the little-known Death on the High Seas Act.  Mike has handled approximately fifteen first-chair jury trials and countless more arbitration hearings.  He is admitted to practice in all Michigan state courts, the United States District Courts for the Eastern and Western Districts of Michigan and the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.              

Mike grew up on the east side of Detroit.  He won a scholarship to attend Wayne State University, graduating magna cum laude in 1994.  While at Wayne State, Mike was a decorated policy debater and a paid researcher for United States District Court Judge Avern Cohn.  Following Wayne State, Mike enrolled in the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law, where he was primarily a night student.  In 1996, he was the champion of the law school’s annual G. Mennen Williams Moot Court Competition. 

Mike and Gary have been friends for more than 20 years and have worked closely together on various matters, including most recently the enormous litigation surrounding the failed Wayne County Consolidated Jail Project. Mike and Gary believe in the Danish proverb “A man’s character reaches town before his person.”  They have made it a priority throughout their careers to develop reputations for collegiality and civility, attributes that not only make them indispensable members of whatever team they join, but more importantly, attributes that save their clients time and money by promoting efficiency and cooperation.   

An active member of his community, Mike ran for local political offices in 2014 and 2018.  He and his wife are frequent contributors to numerous causes, including in particular “Forgotten Harvest” and the Detroit Institute of Arts.  Mike’s interests include literature, the arts, economics, politics, sports, and trying to figure out how to swim a smooth freestyle, which for him is tantamount to untying the Gordian knot or, on some days, splitting the atom.  Most of all, Mike’s interests center around his incomparable wife Kristi and their two beautiful kids, John and Clare.