Michael G McGovern

Practice Areas

Michael McGovern co-chairs the firm’s global government enforcement practice, and he previously served as Managing Partner of the firm’s 400-lawyer New York office. An accomplished trial lawyer, Michael focuses his practice on high-stakes criminal cases where the survival of companies and the liberty interests of their highest-ranking officers and employees are in jeopardy. He has successfully defended clients in a wide variety of high-profile and sensitive matters involving allegations of securities and commodities fraud, other types of financial fraud, domestic and foreign corruption, antitrust offenses, tax offenses, and health care fraud. In such cases, Michael typically faces the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), various U.S. Attorney’s Offices around the country, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), as well as other enforcement agencies around the world.

Clients uniformly praise Michael’s work, telling Chambers, “He is one of the really great white-collar lawyers in New York -- he just has such good judgment, is completely unflappable, and is very careful and analytical in the way he approaches cases.” Clients especially appreciate his crisis management skills in the face of adversity, as one client said: “I can't imagine having a better attorney. I can’t speak more highly of him. He excels at all aspects: he is very good strategically, knowledgeable and calming.”

Prior to joining Ropes & Gray, Michael served for over seven years as an Assistant United States Attorney in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, where he held supervisory positions in both the Organized Crime and Terrorism Unit and the General Crimes Unit. In those capacities, he supervised groups of more than 20 Assistant U.S. Attorneys in grand jury investigations and prosecutions of complex securities fraud, money laundering, terrorism, and RICO cases. Michael also argued more than a dozen appeals before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. In 2004, Michael received the Department of Justice’s award for superior performance as an Assistant United States Attorney.