Michael Peters

For the past 15 plus years, Mr. Peters served as Special Counsel to the City of Long Beach providing legal services in connection with employee disciplinary investigations, interviews, drafting of misconduct allegations and serving as prosecutor for the City’s 17 Departments at all Civil Service Commission and Office of Administrative Hearings. Over that time, Mr. Peters prosecuted more than 150 Administrative Appeal hearings before Administrative Law Judges, private hearing officers, and the Civil Service Commissions for both the City of Long Beach and the City of Newport Beach, CA.

Before starting his own practice, Mr. Peters was a partner at the law firm of Taubman, Simpson, Young & Sulentor where he conducted and oversaw the firm’s employment, trust, business, and personal injury litigation. Mr. Peters personally handled all aspects of such cases including investigation, discovery (depositions, interviews, and document exchanges), mediation and trial. While at Taubman, Simpson, Mr. Peters also handled police officer civil rights conflict cases that were filed in the United States District Court for the Central District of California for the Long Beach City Attorney’s Office. Prior to Taubman, Simpson, Mr. Peters served as a trial deputy assigned to the Litigation Section of the Long Beach City Attorney’s Office for 11 years where he tried to verdict 24 jury trials in State and Federal District Court, conducted approximately 50 arbitrations and took and/or participated in 100’s of depositions. As a trial deputy, Mr. Peters also successfully prepared, argued, and prevailed in four separate appeals before the Second District Court of Appeals.

Mr. Peters started his legal career as a litigation attorney with the Newport Beach office of Knapp, Petersen & Clarke where he took more than 100 depositions of the injured party, participated in approximately 150 witness and client depositions, and conducted approximately 25 arbitrations. Mr. Peters received his undergraduate degree in Business Administration-Finance from Loyola-Marymount University, his J.D. degree from Western State University, School of Law, Fullerton, and has attended postgraduate courses in mediation at Pepperdine Univ. School of Law’s, Strauss Institute for Dispute Resolution.