Michael L. Brooks has over 20 years of experience working on complex litigation matters for both plaintiffs and defendants in state and federal courts throughout the United States. Mike devotes his practice to a wide range of commercial and civil litigation cases, representing both corporate and individual clients. While known for his strong advocacy, Mike also prides himself on his ability to help clients resolve matters at an early stage of litigation in order to avoid the unnecessary expense and distraction of protracted litigation.

Upon graduation from law school, Mike began his career in the Chicago office of Mayer, Brown & Platt, one of the world’s largest international law firms. After several years as an associate there, Mike became a partner at a small Chicago firm. More recently, Mike spent over a decade as Special Counsel and then Partner at Kerns, Frost & Pearlman in Chicago.

In his career, Mike has had extensive experience representing Fortune 1000 companies, private businesses, insurance carriers, professionals, and consumers in trial (including arbitrations) and appellate matters. His broad commercial litigation background includes representing clients in class actions, commercial contract cases, complex construction-dispute arbitrations, and professional liability coverage matters. Mike has represented several dozen victims of clerical sex abuse, including being an essential member of the litigation team that represented six childhood sexual abuse survivors, which resulted in the largest average individual settlements of any multi-party claims involving Catholic priests in the United States.

Mike’s experience goes beyond the courtroom and includes investigations, client interviews, drafting pleadings, motion practice, written and oral discovery, e-discovery issues, working with experts, post-trial briefing, appeals, and settlement strategy. Mike recently served as the primary outside lawyer on two professional liability insurance programs for an insurance carrier client. In that role he developed a risk and loss control issue strategy and acted as lead counsel in several dozen multi-party mediations.