Michael is one of the best known barristers in the United Kingdom, variously described as a radical activist lawyer and human rights defender. He became a Queen’s Counsel in 1989, and was elected as a bencher of Gray’s Inn in 2007.
He has been at the forefront of the most prominent legal battles between victims and authority in this and the last century, including Stephen Lawrence’s family, the families of Charles de Menezes, and of Mark Duggan, both shot by police, and the families of the Hillsborough stadium disaster. He is currently representing victims of the Grenfell Tower fire.
The theme of the cases he undertakes have been described by him as ‘a grave injustice, and the indomitable spirit of those who never gave up until they got to the truth’.