Licensed professionals, such as doctors and lawyers, are responsible for the caliber of their work. They can be held legally liable for errors, omissions or negligence, as well as fraud, misrepresentation and non-performance, when they fail to adhere to accepted standards.

William H. Michelson has more than 30 years of experience representing clients in complex professional liability and malpractice cases, in many counties of New Jersey. His office is in Fanwood, a small town which, for those outside the area, sits between the better-known towns of Plainfield and Westfield, in Union County, New Jersey.

Efficient representation in professional malpractice matters
Clients trust the firm's discrete, effective representation to protect their rights. They call on Mr. Michelson to handle a wide range of professional negligence claims, including those involving attorneys, physicians, nurses, architects, engineers, real estate or mortgage brokers, and insurance brokers.
Our success in complex professional liability cases is grounded in our ability to see matters from multiple angles, and to direct our knowledge and experience toward strategies that achieve an optimal outcome. When doing so is beneficial to our clients, we pursue remedies outside of court, through settlement negotiations, mediation and arbitration. However, our strategy is always backed up with the ability and willingness to go to work in the courtroom.

Expert Witness Services

Mr. Michelson's services as an expert witness or expert consultant are in considerable demand, mostly in New Jersey but also sometimes in other states, in cases being handled by other attorneys. This is because most legal malpractice cases require expert testimony, and the attorney of record for a party cannot do this himself. He has written over 150 Affidavits of Merit (a step required by the New Jersey Rules of Court well before the case is ready for a formal report), and only does so when he believes that it is right, and a lawyer has most likely committed malpractice or some other tort. He also works for the defense of lawyers, if that is who retains him and the case is not meritorious.

He has written over 80 formal expert reports in legal malpractice and ethics cases, given dozens of depositions both in those cases and where he is a fact witness, and has testified in Court or at other hearings at least 15 times. Though he will not do this in kinds of cases where he does not have enough personal experience to do it fairly, he has done successful expert reports in cases involving most areas of the law. These range from personal injury law to commercial transactions, and from wills and trusts to real estate and land use law. That is because he has an unusually broad range of direct personal experience, in a legal career that has now spanned 35 years.


A Skilled New Jersey Professional Liability Lawyer

Mr. Michelson is a Certified Civil Trial Attorney with over 70 jury trials, over 20 bench trials, and over 40 appeals to his credit. He is also a New Jersey Superior Court Mediator, and a longtime member of Land Use Boards, having served on three of them, at various times. He was named to Super Lawyers of New Jersey for 2011 and 2013 in the Professional Negligence field, a process that a lawyer cannot seek, but is solely the result of recommendation by other lawyers.