Michael Bloch is an accomplished trial attorney with an unparalleled record of courtroom success. Most recently, he was the lead trial counsel in Jawaun Fraser v. City of New York, Undercover Officer 84, Detective Matthew Regina, and Detective Jason Deltoro, a federal civil rights wrongful conviction action brought against three NYPD detectives and the City of New York for constitutional violations.  After trial, the jury found all defendants liable on all claims, and awarded Michael’s client nearly $2 million in compensatory and punitive damages. Coverage of the case can be found here and here.

Prior to his most recent victory, Michael was one of the lead attorneys in Sines v. Kessler, the historic federal civil rights lawsuit brought against the neo-Nazis and white supremacists who conspired to commit racially-motivated violence in Charlottesville, Virginia in August 2017. The four-week jury trial resulted in a $26 million judgment for Michael’s clients. Coverage of the trial can be found here, here, and here.

Prior to launching Bloch & White LLP, Michael practiced at Kaplan Hecker & Fink LLP, where he represented individuals investigated by various state and federal regulatory agencies, in addition to leading other plaintiff-side matters, including the Charlottesville litigation. Before Kaplan Hecker, Michael spent over seven years as a public defender at the Bronx Defenders and three years at Williams & Connolly LLP.

At Bronx Defenders, Michael represented hundreds of clients charged with criminal matters at all stages of litigation.  He tried more than a dozen felony and misdemeanor cases to verdict and earned an acquittal or dismissal of all criminal charges in all but one case. In his last four years as a public defender, he tried seven cases to jury verdict – as lead counsel on five of them – and earned a full acquittal on all of them. In addition to working as a staff attorney, Michael was a supervisor in the Criminal Defense Practice, counseling a team of five to eight felony-certified attorneys on criminal matters from arrest through trial. Michael was also a member of the Homicide Practice Group, and previously served as a supervisor of the Investigations Practice, training and overseeing the team of Bronx Defenders investigators. At Williams & Connolly LLP in Washington, D.C., Michael worked primarily in the areas of commercial litigation and legal malpractice defense.

Michael has been a member of the faculty of the leading trial advocacy schools in the country, including Harvard Law School’s Trial Advocacy Workshop, National Criminal Defense College, the New York State Bar Association’s Trial Academy and The Defenders’ Academy. He has been a guest lecturer on civil procedure at Columbia Law School, the University of Virginia School of Law, and Georgetown University Law Center, among others. Michael has conducted numerous trainings on trial advocacy and criminal defense investigations.

Michael graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he represented clients charged with crimes in Roxbury District Court as part of the Criminal Justice Institute, and he worked with the NAACP representing a client in post-conviction proceedings as part of the Death Penalty Clinic. He was also a member of the winning team in the Ames Moot Court competition. After law school, Michael served as a law clerk to the Honorable Chief Judge Helen Ginger Berrigan on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana and subsequently to the Honorable Diane P. Wood on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.

Michael graduated cum laude from Wesleyan University with a B.A. in Government.  Before law school, he worked as a criminal defense investigator with the Public Defender Service in Washington, D.C.

Michael is currently a member of the Criminal Justice Act Panel and has been a member of the New York City Bar Association’s Criminal Justice Operations Committee and Mass Incarceration Task Force. He is proud to serve as a member of the board of the Bronx Defenders. His writings have appeared in the New York Times, USA Today, New York Daily News, Bloomberg Law, National Law Journal, The Champion and The Forward.