Having worked as an attorney both for an insurance company and a personal injury law firm, Mike realized that his true passion was in the representation of injured people.
A Seattle native, Mike graduated from Bishop Blanchet High School and the University of Washington, followed by law school at Northeastern University in Boston. He attended the Georgetown University Law Center as an E. Barrett Prettyman fellow, earning a rare LL.M in trial advocacy while supervising third-year law students trying criminal cases in Washington, DC Superior Court.
While in law school, Mike assisted in an 8th Amendment “cruel and unusual punishment” federal trial in Raleigh, North Carolina with the goal of reforming unconstitutional prisons in North Carolina. He then worked for Southern Prisoners Defense Committee in Atlanta, Georgia, gathering evidence to help stop the execution of condemned inmates on death row throughout the South. As an intern at the federal public defender in Alaska, he focused his practice on the defense of those who crossed the Alaska–Canadian border with drugs or contraband. He won his first jury trial, earning an acquittal in federal court for a young woman accused of carrying drugs from Canada across the US border.
After Washington DC, Mike returned to Seattle, where he worked as a public defender in King County. He has defended people accused of crimes in King County Superior Court in Seattle and in Kent. He also defended the accused in district courts in Issaquah, Bellevue, Redmond, Kent, Burien, and Auburn.
While working for a major insurance company for nearly three years, Mike he learned the practice of insurance defense before deciding to represent injured plaintiffs instead. He then worked for nine years for a Seattle personal-injury firm before leaving to form Maxwell Graham.
Mike Maxwell has an unusually wide breadth of experience as a lawyer. From assisting in prison reform and death penalty cases in the South to defending the criminally accused in Alaska, Washington DC and Washington State, Mike has brought more than 100 cases to trial, arbitration, or resolution by motion.
While at Maxwell Graham, Mike has focused his practice on medical malpractice and major personal injury.
