Michael Mihm’s unique trial practice focuses on plaintiff-side legal malpractice cases. The Best Lawyers in America® has named Michael “Lawyer of the Year” five times in the field of Legal Malpractice Law–Plaintiff. Michael is one of the few plaintiffs’ attorneys in the United States to be certified as a specialist in legal malpractice law by The State Bar of California Board of Legal Specialization. He brings malpractice lawsuits against some of the nation’s largest law firms involving some of the law’s most complex practice areas.
Colorado Super Lawyers® magazine, for many years, has named Michael as one of Colorado’s “Top 100” lawyers. In addition to Legal Malpractice Law, Michael is included among The Best Lawyers in America® in the field of Commercial Litigation and Personal Injury Litigation-Plaintiff.
Michael has been inducted as a member of the American Board of Trial Advocates (ABOTA). He is a Past President of the Colorado Trial Lawyers Association, the largest specialty bar organization in Colorado. He is a graduate of and remains active with the Trial Lawyer’s College®, an organization founded by legendary trial lawyer Gerry Spence, dedicated to teaching cutting-edge trial advocacy to civil plaintiff and criminal defense trial lawyers.
Michael is a co-founder of Ogborn Mihm, LLP. Michael represents clients in courtrooms nationwide.
Michael’s Philosophy of Client-Centered Trials
Michael is a student of the art of trial persuasion. He believes that every client has a compelling story, and he and his team use advanced investigation and trial techniques to discover and best tell the client’s story at trial. Michael understands that a client’s goals and objectives are paramount. Thus, we include the client in every major decision of the litigation process, remembering that the case is about the client, not about us.
Michael’s Expertise in Legal Malpractice Litigation
Michael has prosecuted or defended hundreds of legal malpractice lawsuits, has tried many such cases to verdict, and has also served as an expert witness in many such suits. For many years (2005-2021) Michael served as managing editor of Lawyers’ Professional Liability in Colorado, 2018 Ed. (Michael T. Mihm ed., CLE in Colorado, Inc., 2018). This two-volume, 57-chapter treatise focused on lawyers’ professional liability and legal ethics issues.
Michael’s legal malpractice clients come from all walks of life, but most are businesspeople or companies. His legal malpractice cases usually involve underlying business transactions or lawsuits, often involving intellectual property disputes, patent law, securities, real estate, land use, mergers and acquisitions, estate planning, tax law, bankruptcy, and many other legal matters. Michael’s legal malpractice cases increasingly focus on patent law and other intellectual property matters.
Michael brings legal malpractice cases all over the United States; he is currently litigating or has recently litigated legal malpractice cases in state or federal courts in California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Iowa, Massachusetts, North Dakota, Utah, and Texas. His legal malpractice cases are often part of massive disputes with multiple lawsuits, arbitrations, and appeals filed in multiple jurisdictions, and he and his team pride themselves on working collegially with the lead counsel quarterbacking those multi-jurisdictional undertakings.
While most of Michael’s clients are businesses or businesspeople, Michael also handles non-business-related legal malpractice cases. For example, Michael and his colleague, Betsy Hyatt, represented pro bono a young man who was sentenced to life in prison at age 15 for a murder that he did not commit and who, after 14 years in prison, was released from custody. Michael and Betsy sued the negligent criminal defense counsel on the young man’s behalf and recovered a confidential settlement.
Related to his legal malpractice litigation, Michael is often retained to represent lawyers in fee disputes with clients or among law firms or in litigation related to law firm breakups or dissolution.
Michael’s Experience as an Expert Witness
Other law firms routinely retain Michael to serve as a consultant or an expert witness related to professional ethics, conflicts of interest, fiduciary duties to clients, the existence of the client-lawyer relationship, the standards of care required of lawyers in litigation matters, or reasonableness of fees in litigation matters.
Michael’s Experience in Commercial and Business Tort Litigation
Michael also has a significant business and business tort litigation practice. Michael’s commercial and business tort litigation often involves claims arising from breach of contract, oppression of minority business owners, partnership disputes, theft of trade secrets, intellectual property disputes, computer fraud, and claims arising from breaches of fiduciary duty and other misconduct by company insiders. Michael also represents clients in select probate or inheritance litigation matters, usually involving large estates and usually at the request of probate lawyers when it appears that a matter is headed to trial. Michael routinely represents clients in the arbitration of business disputes.
Michael’s Experience in Personal Injury Litigation
Michael also represents clients in select catastrophic injury lawsuits. Michael is active with the American Association for Justice (AAJ), where he is part of the Leaders Forum and a member of the Business Torts section and the Jury Bias Litigation Group.
Michael’s Bar Leadership
Michael is a past President of the Colorado Trial Lawyers Association (CTLA), an organization of approximately 1,300 plaintiff and consumer trial lawyers in Colorado. CTLA is the largest specialty bar organization in Colorado. Michael served as an officer of CTLA from 2010 through 2016 and continues to serve on the board of directors.
Michael is a past president of the Board of Directors of CLE in Colorado, Inc., the publishing and continuing education arm of the Colorado and Denver Bar Associations. He served for six years on the Board.
Michael is the past chair of the Lawyers’ Professional Liability Committee for the Colorado Bar Association. He also served for several years on the Executive Council of the Colorado Bar Association’s Litigation Section.
For several years, Michael served as an Adjunct Professor of Law at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law, where he taught a course on law firm management and professional ethics titled “Private Law Firms.”
Michael was heavily involved with a multi-year initiative of a subcommittee of the Colorado Supreme Court’s Advisory Committee, in conjunction with the Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel, that developed an online platform for Lawyer Self-Assessment. The Self-Assessment program is designed to help lawyers better serve clients, simplify lawyers’ professional lives, and help prevent malpractice claims and ethics complaints.
Michael’s book on Lawyers’ Professional Liability provides much of the source material for the
Self-Assessment program. This innovative program is among the first such programs in the United States.
Michael is active with the International Society of Primerus Law Firms. Michael is a former Chair of the Primerus Personal Injury Institute and, for several years, served on the Institute’s Executive Committee.
Michael writes and often speaks on trial practice, professional ethics, and malpractice prevention to lawyers and bar associations. He is the author of chapters on Rule 12 Defenses and Objections and the Colorado Uniform Arbitration Act published in Thomson Reuters’
Colorado Civil Forms and Commentary, 3d (Vols. 11-13) (Colorado Practice Series).
Personal
Michael grew up in rural Michigan and Oregon, the eldest of six children. Michael’s father was a building contractor, auto-mechanic, and sometimes a farmer. Michael’s mother was a licensed practical nurse. Michael worked his way through college and graduated with honors. While in college, Michael also served for a year as a missionary in the Republic of Indonesia, teaching English as a Second Language, where he met his future spouse, Nanette, then a law student, world traveler, and daughter of a senior Indonesian military officer and Member of Parliament.
Michael returned to the U.S., and Nanette eventually followed, where they married and focused on completing their education. In 1983, Michael and Nanette both graduated from the University of Southern California, with Michael obtaining his Juris Doctor degree from the USC Gould School of Law.
Michael began his legal career as an associate attorney with a banking law firm in Beverly Hills, California. In 1985, he moved his young family to Colorado, resolving to become a trial attorney, and soon became a trial partner in one of Colorado’s largest professional liability defense firms.
In 2003, Michael formed the boutique trial firm of Starrs, Mihm & Caschette LLP to focus on plaintiff-side legal malpractice litigation and commercial and business tort litigation. After Ms. Starrs and Mr. Caschette both became district judges in 2012, Michael formed Ogborn Mihm, LLP, with Murray and Mike Ogborn. Michael served as the firm’s managing partner for many years.
Michael and Nanette have two grown children and three small grandchildren with whom they are enamored. Michael and Nanette’s daughter, Stefanie Mihm Albrecht, is a schoolteacher and graduate of the University of Southern California and the Harvard University Graduate School of Education. Michael and Nanette’s son, Nicholas Mihm, is an Emmy-nominated director and documentary filmmaker and a graduate of the Arizona State University Herberger Institute Film School.
Michael and Nanette enjoy traveling with their children and grandchildren. They like to travel to remote and beautiful places within Indonesia and other places not often seen by tourists.
