Masters of the Bench

Michael is a Senior Counsel (1994) and a former Chair of the Bar of Ireland. He was called to the Irish Bar in 1978, the Bar of New York in 1981 and the Bar of England & Wales in 1987. He is also a member of the Northern Ireland Bar and the Bar of the US Supreme Court. After graduating from University College Dublin with Masters’ degrees in both economics and law, he took an LL.M. from the University of Pennsylvania before joining the New York law firm of Shearman and Sterling. He returned to Ireland in 1981 and practices in the fields of commercial law, EU law and judicial review, appearing regularly in all the Superior Courts and the Court of Justice of the EU. A door tenant of Monckton Chambers, Michael also acts frequently as arbitrator in international commercial arbitrations (ICC, LCIA and UNCITRAL). He was elected a Bencher of King’s Inns in 2007 and in 2008 was elected as a Fellow of the International Academy of Trial Lawyers in the United States of which he is now a director. An Adjunct Professor of Law at the UCD Sutherland Law School, Michael is a board member of the Irish Film Institute and was for 13 years a director of the Dublin Theatre Festival.