Allen L. Michel
Allen L. Michel is a State Bar-certified Legal Malpractice Specialist with four decades of jury trial and appellate experience focused on complex business and real property litigation matters, often as elements of lawsuits against lawyers and law firms. Allen has handled virtually all types of cases: negligence, conflicts of interest, and other breaches of fiduciary duty, fraud, fee disputes, malicious prosecution, and State Bar disciplinary proceedings. The substantive subject areas of his legal malpractice cases have included entertainment law and intellectual property, real property and mechanics lien law, partnership and business law, marital dissolution, estate planning and tax issues, business litigation, and bankruptcy. He has been counsel in scores of anti-SLAPP proceedings and is also an experienced appellate attorney.
Allen has lectured to groups of attorneys throughout the country on issues of legal ethics, legal malpractice, risk management, and attorney’s fees. He is frequently consulted by attorneys evaluating complex malpractice or conflict of interest issues, and he is often retained to testify at trial as an expert witness in such matters.
He has been “AV” rated since 1980, and has been recognized by his peers as a Southern California Super Lawyer in the area of Business Litigation each year since 2007 – fewer than five percent of California lawyers receive this distinction.
Allen is a member of a number of professional organizations focusing on issues of professional competence and ethics, including the ABA’s Standing Committee on Professional Liability and the Professional Liability Underwriting Society.
Allen grew up in Pacoima (a neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley) before obtaining his two degrees at UCLA (B.A. in 1971 and J.D. in 1975). Now a resident of Calabasas after 37 years on the Westside of L.A., he admits to being a mediocre golfer, a slowing but still effective player on a softball team he co-founded in 1976, and a die-hard Dodger fan. He will stop channel surfing to watch any film by Quentin Tarantino or either of the first two Godfather films, but not the third one.
Bar Admissions
State Bar of California
Education
J.D. - UCLA School of Law, 1975
B.A. - University of California, Los Angeles, 1971
Professional Associations
ABA Standing Committee on Lawyers' Professional Liability
Professional Liability Underwriting Society
Awards
AV Rated Since 1980
Southern California Super Lawyer 2007 - Present