Michael L. "Mike" Kirby

For more than 30 years, Michael L. Kirby has been involved in civil litigation, trying more than 50 jury trials throughout his career and obtaining total recoveries valued in excess of $275 million as lead counsel. His expertise is extensive and covers a variety of practice areas that involve business, partnerships, real estate and investor disputes. He has received multiple Outstanding Trial Lawyer awards from the Consumer Attorneys of San Diego. He successfully tried five cases in five different cities in the first half of 2016. In 2014, he successfully represented a physician in defeating defamation claims of $3 million against her in a jury trial, and obtained a verdict on her counter-suit for $250,000 in compensatory damages for defamation and $2.5 million in punitive damages.

After being a founding partner in 1976 at Kirby Noonan Lance & Hoge, LLP in San Diego, Kirby and his son and partner for a decade, Jason Kirby, left that firm in June 2016 to form their own firm, Kirby & Kirby, LLP, in new offices near the courthouses in San Diego. Kirby was instrumental in growing the Kirby Noonan firm to become one of the most respected litigation firms in San Diego County.

Kirby is listed in Best Lawyers® – the leading rating of U.S. lawyers – for Bet The Company Litigation (San Diego Lawyer of the Year 2015), Commercial Litigation for multiple years, and is now also listed for a third category: Securities Litigation.

Since 1994, Kirby has been a member of the American Board of Trial Advocates (ABOTA) – a national organization of civil trial attorneys – and he served on its National Board of Directors. He is a master in the American Inns of Court – William B. Enright Chapter. Kirby was also named one of the top attorneys in California – nine years in a row – by California Super Lawyers magazine, an honor given to only five percent of attorneys in the state.

He was a founder of the Association of Business Trial Lawyers chapter of San Diego, served four years as a Southern District of California Lawyer Representative to the Ninth Circuit and served as the president of the San Diego chapter of the International Network of Boutique Law Firms.

In his spare time, Kirby enjoys fly fishing with the bears in Alaska, playing mediocre golf and traveling with his wife, Carla, and playing with their grandchildren.