Michael Starr joined Schertler & Onorato, L.L.P. as counsel in 2004. His primary area of practice is litigation with a focus on criminal defense. Since joining the firm, Mr. Starr has represented clients accused of a variety of white collar and street crime offenses including narcotics trafficking, extortion, healthcare fraud, and accounting fraud. He has also represented civil litigants, participated in corporate internal investigations, and counseled corporations facing government investigation. Before joining Schertler & Onorato, Mr. Starr spent the years 2000-2004 at the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia (PDS) as a trial and appellate attorney. At PDS, he represented criminal defendants in hundreds of cases that ranged in seriousness from misdemeanor charges of theft, assault, and drug possession, to felony charges of narcotics distribution, firearms possession, robbery, sexual abuse, and homicide. Beginning in 2002, Mr. Starr served as a Supervising Attorney in the General Felony Section of PDS’s Trial Division. In that position, he conducted biweekly training sessions for the agency’s junior trial lawyers and closely supervised those attorneys as they handled felony cases. Mr. Starr spent his final two years at PDS exclusively handling homicide and sexual abuse cases. While at PDS, Mr. Starr tried numerous cases and represented both grand jury and trial witnesses. He also wrote and argued appeals before the D.C. Court of Appeals and testified before the D.C. Council’s Committee on the Judiciary.
Mr. Starr spent 1998-2000 as an E. Barrett Prettyman Fellow in the Georgetown University Law Center’s Criminal Justice Clinic. As a Prettyman Fellow, he taught biweekly classes on evidence, criminal procedure, and trial advocacy to Georgetown University Law students and supervised those students as they represented criminal defendants in misdemeanor cases in the Superior Court for the District of Columbia. At the same time, Mr. Starr represented criminal defendants in both misdemeanor and felony cases.
Mr. Starr has given numerous guest lectures at law schools including the Georgetown University Law Center, Howard University Law School, and Yale Law School. He is also a faculty member at the Harvard Law School Trial Advocacy Workshop.
Mr. Starr is a graduate of Towson State University and The George Washington University Law School. He also holds an LL.M. degree from the Georgetown University Law Center. Mr. Starr is a member of the District of Columbia Bar as well as the federal court bars of the District of Columbia, Maryland and the Eastern District of Michigan.
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