Michael Barta is a senior partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Baker Botts. He is the Co-chair of the Trial Department in Washington, and the worldwide Chair of the firm’s White-Collar Crime and Corporate Investigations group. He has served as lead trial counsel in state and federal courts in eighteen states and the District of Columbia, and has won dismissals, summary judgments and jury verdicts for his clients in some of their biggest cases.
Mr. Barta is a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers. He is ranked in The Legal 500 and in Chambers USA, which describes him as “a fantastic guy and a superb lawyer,” and “one of the go-to guys for significant complex commercial litigation across the states.” In 2007, Mr. Barta was featured in The National Law Journal’s “Defense Hot List” for winning an acquittal of a healthcare executive charged with conspiracy to violate the Medicare Anti-Kickback Act. He is also known for patent litigation, and for his work in the Nixon Papers trial, the Halliburton FCPA investigation and an internal investigation for NASCAR into the fatal accident involving Dale Earnhardt at the 2001 Daytona 500.
Mr. Barta represents companies and individuals under investigation by law enforcement authorities and he defends the wrongly accused at trial. Much of this work has focused on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and analogous corruption statutes in the United Kingdom, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia. He also has experience in the defense of a wide variety of other substantive charges, including antitrust violations, perjury and false statements, obstruction of justice, mail and wire fraud, securities, bankruptcy, health-care and computer fraud, environmental crime, money-laundering and political corruption.
Mr. Barta’s civil practice involves representing companies and individuals in complex commercial cases headed for trial. His work has focused primarily on intellectual property matters. He also regularly defends companies in energy and environmental litigation, class action lawsuits and professional sports disputes. His clients include a top-ranked tennis player, an NFL team and a prominent sports league.
Mr. Barta is an honors graduate of Princeton University and the Harvard Law School, and a former clerk to the Honorable Jerome Farris of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He has served as an instructor in trial advocacy with the National Institutes of Trial Advocacy and the Georgetown University Law Center. He is regularly listed in Best Lawyers in America in the categories of White-Collar Criminal Defense, Patent Litigation, Commercial Litigation, and Environmental Litigation. He has been listed in Washington, D.C. Super Lawyers, The International Who’s Who of Business Lawyers, and the Washingtonian’s “Best Legal Minds in Washington,” and his trial work has been featured in The American Lawyer’s Special Section on the Litigation Department of the Year.
Prior to joining Baker Botts, Mr. Barta was a partner at Miller, Cassidy, Larroca & Lewin.
