Michael Scott Morgenstern

Michael S. Morgenstern’s dedication to representing the rights of average citizens hurt by big companies stems from his own small town upbringing. His father, Carl, a Harvard Law School graduate, disliked ‘big corporate law,’ opting instead for the ‘common touch’ by practicing general law in the small town of Hamilton, Ohio. As a boy, Morgenstern worked in his father’s law practice after school learning the skills that would later lay the moral and business structure foundation he would need for his successful law practice today.

Graduating from American University Law in 1978, Morgenstern began his legal career clerking for Judge James B. Parsons who was the Chief Judge of the United States Federal District Court in Chicago and also the first African-American federal judge in the history of the United States.

After completing the clerkship, Morgenstern joined the 9th largest law firm in the country, Weil, Gotshal & Manges, in its New York City office. Not satisfied working on cases with “nameless faces,” Morgenstern left corporate law to become an instructor at Brooklyn Law School. While at Brooklyn Law, he wrote several treatises and law review articles focusing on the rights of victims and consumers. During this process of research and writing, Morgenstern realized that he missed practicing law; only this time, like his father, he was drawn to helping people with real issues.

In 1988, Morgenstern moved to the Washington, DC area to establish his own practice dedicated solely to representing the injured. Today, with offices in the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia, Morgenstern Injury Lawyers consists of attorneys who follow Michael’s approach to meticulous attentive client service. “We accept a smaller number of cases per year than most other personal injury law firms so that all of our clients get the attention I would expect if I had been injured.

My job is not simply the practice of law,” says Morgenstern. “My job is to help put my clients and their families’ lives back together after something bad has happened. My clients have already been injured once; my responsibility is to take steps to insure no further harm is done. ”Morgenstern’s impressive record of verdicts and settlements proves that his approach works. Among these was a landmark $59.7 million verdict against Toyota Motor Corporation and a $3.35 million settlement with Metrobus.