Burshteyn Polin LLP focuses on AI, crypto, cybersecurity, deceptive business practices, complex business disputes, and class and mass actions.
A small team of elite advocates can face down any size army.
The gap between top 1% and top 0.1% advocacy is an infinite chasm. Excellence is a pursuit, not a destination. Truly elite advocacy pays outsized dividends.
Litigating on both sides of the v. provides unique insights that focus preparation and persuasion.
Skilled advocates who understand their clients’ objectives should not use the billable hour as a crutch. Fixed-fee and contingency arrangements better align attorney incentives with clients goals by sharing the risks and rewards.
The lawyer most likely to persuade the Judge is the team member with the best knowledge of the evidence and the clients’ challenges. The boutique format brings lawyers closer to their clients and their cases, fosters meaningful mentorship, and produces better advocacy.
Practice
We've managed cases with over $1 billion in controversy across the country, in courts and arbitrations across the country, ranging from California to Wyoming, New York, Puerto Rico, federal court, state court, and arbitration. Our firm already has active cases in half a dozen+ jurisdictions in state and federal courts around the nation, including California and New York.
01
We represent innovative companies building the future of AI, crypto, and other emerging technologies, as well as individuals and organizations righting wrongs done by more resourced adversaries. Our team has done over 8 TROs in the last year and a half and are no strangers to crises. We deal with competitors, unauthorized access, competitor antitrust disputes, and unfair competition.
02
We pioneered many areas of crypto litigation over the years, including partnership theories related to DAOs, temporary and preliminary injunctive relief, and alternative service on the blockchain. We’ve recovered over $250M in stolen crypto.
We’ve represented high-net-worth investors, top DeFi projects, and startups. We’ve fought against market manipulation. We’ve handled DOJ investigations, CFTC investigations, and SEC investigations. When the exchanges do wrong, we’re not shy about going after them. We have active cases against Aave, OKX, Coinbase, and others.
We’ve done defamation cases in crypto based on online trolling. We’ve done incident response, and we understand the technology. We know how to persuasively craft winning strategies for judges and fact-finders.
03
We’ve represented billionaires, celebrities, businesses, and founders in defamation, Lanham Act, and other cases all around the country. We’ve been on both sides of it. We have extensive experience with anti-SLAPP in state and federal courts nationwide.
04
We’ve done M&A gone bad, earn-out disputes, and founder splits. We’re very good at resolving these disputes before they get to filing. Mike was a former CEO and founder and has been on that side of the table. We know the challenges founders face. We’ve represented private equity firms, startups, founders, and major venture capital firms.
05
We’ve prosecuted class actions against Fortune 500 companies all over the country. Our cases typically involve fraud, electronic privacy violations, pollution, or other corporate misconduct.
This includes:
06
In or outside of Court, we can develop trial strategies geared towards finders of law and fact. We have experience with JAMS, AAA, mass-arbitration, and international arbitration.
07
The firm provides regulatory advice in areas of crypto, AI, and privacy. We know how to develop and handle regulatory investigations. We’ve gone up against federal and state regulators. We’re not afraid to sue the government, and we’re also able to settle. We have a track record of getting investigations closed, whether they are brought by the Department of Justice, Securities and Exchange Commission, Commodities Futures Trading Commission, or others. We also know how to help crime and market manipulation victims cooperate with regulators to pursue justice.
08
Mike has managed some of the largest data breaches and ransomware attacks. Mike has handled dozens of incidents, small, medium, and large, ranging from startups to Fortune 500 companies. We know how to work with the DOJ, FBI, and global law enforcement in the immediate aftermath and for the long haul. Mike has dealt with massive software thefts from the technology industry and successfully executed worldwide rapid takedown campaigns.
09
Mike has 10+ years of experience as a fractional General Counsel. His clients have done hundreds of millions in financing, acquired businesses, sold to public and private companies, and gone through the entire gauntlet of the startup roller coaster. As a former CEO & Founder, Mike knows how annoying it is to deal with corporate lawyers. We can’t promise not to be annoying, but we try.
We represent a rarefied portfolio of AI startups, enterprise startups, and consumer startups, individual investors, and venture capital firms. Some of the best founders in the world trust us to manage their legal roadmap.
Bottom line: If it’s hard, we want to do it. If you’re in a fight, we want to be on the frontlines. If you need to broker peace, we know how to do that too.
Technology
We are technical lawyers. Our team knows how to code. Even before AI, enough to be dangerous. Mike was the CEO of an engineering-focused company and developed software for the Air Force, top banks, media companies, and the Department of Homeland Security. Jacob worked for technology companies before law school and draws on that knowledge when litigating e-privacy, advertising fraud, and other cases involving online businesses. We bring technical precision to our legal work.
We’ve been on the leading edge of AI adoption. Mike has taught AI law at UC Berkeley. He has represented leading innovators in AI, machine learning, and large language models in matters involving copyright, right of publicity, and privacy.
Mike first adopted o3 in Spring 2025 and was blown away by the power of a reasoning model. He used it at trial to great success. He’s dug in with every step-change in capability, including leaning into coding harnesses late last year. Like everyone else, Mike spent his 2025 holidays playing with Claude Code. He developed a custom orchestrator with Codex driving across models, developed an adversarial review system, and has innovated anti-hallucination technologies. He’s built systems that change how clients digest case updates, the management of discovery, preparation for hearings, brief revisions, and trial.
We don’t think AI is a robot. It is a suit of armor. We use it to gain leverage for our clients.
We’re committed to passing on the remarkable benefits of the current moment the world finds itself in to our clients. We believe that the barriers to litigate cases are going down. We do not think armies are necessary anymore, and that the practice of law will return to a mentorship model of a small group of lawyers that will fight for their clients in court. More cases will go to trial.
With our clients, we are innovating the practice of law itself.
Team
Mike and Jacob debated together for years at UC Berkeley. They were ranked the number one debate team in America in 2008. They enjoy nothing more than a good fight for a worthy cause.
01 / Founding Partner
Mike litigates and tries complex business and technology disputes. His cases involve AI, crypto, investor and computer fraud, defamation, antitrust, privacy, data security, trade secret, copyright, trademark, and other novel Internet law and technology issues. He is lead counsel in multiple cases involving more than $100m in controversy. Mike also represents clients in cybercrime, crypto, and consumer protection investigations and regulatory inquiries. He has litigated matters in federal and state courts in California, New York, Texas, Florida, Arizona, Georgia, Ohio, Delaware, Maryland, Utah, Puerto Rico, Wyoming, Washington, D.C., and internationally. In the last 18 months, Mike has led over eight bet-the-company urgent crises involving cross-TROs and PIs in nationwide federal courts, including multi-week preliminary injunction trial proceedings. In 2026, the Daily Journal recognized Mike as one of 100 leading commercial litigators in California.
“Outstanding closing remarks. I can’t describe what you guys have left me to deal with. It’s indescribable, as a matter of fact. They don’t prepare you in law school to handle a case like this.”Read more
02 / Founding Partner
Jacob specializes in helping victims of fraud recover losses from powerful opponents. He represents consumers, small businesses, startups, founders, and investors in all manner of disputes involving deceptive business practices, cyber security failures, unfair competition, and privacy violations. For many years, nearly all of his representations have been on a contingency (percent of recovery) fee basis. Eschewing hourly payment structures helps him and his clients focus on the actual value of their cases, and improve access to justice.
In his practice, Jacob often represents large groups. These cases can be organized as class actions, mass actions, or cases brought by public entities, such as cities, counties, or Native American tribes. For example, he and his former colleagues at Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, LLP obtained a $230 million recovery for the People of San Francisco in opioid litigation, winning the Daily Journal's “California Lawyers of the Year” award in 2023. In another case brought on behalf of victims of the 2015 Refugio Oil Spill in Santa Barbara, they obtained a $200 million settlement from a large publicly-traded oil company shortly before trial. He also litigated similar cases against other large technology, financial, cryptocurrency, insurance, oil, and chemical companies.
Jacob enjoys working with clients, experts, and colleagues to learn how different industries function and the conditions that give rise to fraud. He tries to bring a nuanced perspective to that analysis, as an attorney who previously represented large corporations at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, LLP. In privacy and advertising-related litigation, he also draws on his pre-law school experience as a digital media buyer for technology companies and progressive political campaigns.
Jacob grew up in Oakland, California. His first five years of education were primarily in French, which he speaks fluently. He earned his Bachelor of Arts in History and Political Science at the University of California at Berkeley in 2011. While there, he and Mike Burshteyn led Cal to win the Copeland Award for the #1 ranked Two-Person Debate Team in the United States. Jacob earned his Juris Doctorate cum laude from Northwestern University School of Law in 2016. While there he was also named a “Public Service Star.”
03 / Operations
Modern law firms require substantive technology functions. Meghan is an experienced technology executive leading strategy and operations for the most sophisticated global organizations.
Meghan makes sure the law firm runs so the lawyers can lawyer. Meghan began her career as a technology consultant at Accenture managing multiple early Fortune 500 Salesforce deployments. She joined Twitter pre-IPO where she was an operations leader and built many internal systems and tools used by the sales team. At Amazon Web Services, Meghan was the Head of Global Partner Operations. Most recently, Meghan was a Managing Director of Strategy and Operations at Silicon Valley Bank for the Private Equity and Venture Capital Groups. She managed through the SVB crisis and subsequent integration with First Citizens.
Meghan is an elite technology and business strategist who knows how to drive organizations towards operational excellence. She is building the organization around our lawyers that will maximize our ability to leverage technology innovation to serve our clients.
04 / Paralegal
Taylor is our star paralegal. At UC Berkeley, she was one of the top college debaters in the country.
05 / Legal Analyst
Emilio is our legal analyst. He recently graduated from UC Berkeley and is coming off an elite-8 run at the National Debate Tournament.
Scale
We have a large network of top lawyers in America who we co-counsel with at firms large and small, from Colorado, to New Mexico, to Florida, to New York. We can scale as needed and leverage technology to flip the asymmetric nature of litigation in favor of our clients.
We are also hiring.
