Michael Paul Bowen is a leading first-chair trial lawyer with decades of courtroom experience and a record of winning highly complex civil, criminal, and regulatory disputes. Mike began his career as a prosecutor in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, where he tried over twenty jury trials and led major prosecutions involving financial fraud, government corruption, organized crime, and some of New York’s earliest internet-based narcotics-trafficking cases. Working with state and federal joint task forces, Mike prosecuted some of the first New York cases involving national and international internet drug-trafficking and tried large multi-defendant conspiracy and enterprise corruption cases.

In private practice, Mike represents and tries cases for a broad array of clients in commercial litigation, financial-products disputes, commercial torts, civil RICO, securities fraud, unfair competition, False Claims Act defense, corporate internal investigations, employment discrimination, defamation, and complex multi-jurisdictional business disputes.

His matters have included the representation of:

• An investor in a large, decade-long real-estate fraud involving commercial bribery, federal criminal charges, and parallel foreclosure and receivership proceedings.

• A skilled nursing facility and its executive in a high-stakes FCA action seeking hundreds of millions of dollars.

• A New Jersey entity defrauded by business partners in Israel, in litigation involving the Hague Convention and parallel Israeli proceedings.

• The widow of a partner in an Israeli-based U.S. entity, in dual-jurisdiction contract and breach-of-fiduciary-duty litigation.

• An investor in a Puerto Rico venture in a multi-national contract and fraud dispute.

• Family estate trusts in multimillion-dollar fiduciary-duty litigation.

• A 96-year-old trust beneficiary in litigation against a corrupt trustee (pro bono).

• A multimillion-dollar corporation in a $150 million action against a global bank for negligent legal advice that triggered EPA enforcement.

• An international metals company in a federal criminal investigation, government civil forfeiture, and related private actions involving tariff violations and alleged smuggling.

• Real estate developers in New York Martin Act and related criminal investigations.

• Business owners in multiple fraud, racketeering, larceny, and corruption investigations, often resulting in no charges filed.

• Fairfax Financial Holdings in a civil RICO action exposing an illegal short-selling scheme involving defamatory market reports and manipulated news publications.

• A travel company in a $100 million action against a multinational bank for misappropriating a travel-deal distribution platform.

• Business owners in a fraud and extortion trial involving a defendant previously convicted in a criminal RICO case.

• A not-for-profit foundation victimized by embezzlement in coordinated civil and criminal proceedings.

• Multiple executives and professionals—particularly women—in major employment-discrimination actions under New York State and City law.

• New York financial firms and a prominent architecture firm in defending race and gender discrimination claims.

Before co-founding Herschmann Benson Bowen LLP, Mike was a founding partner with the law firm Glenn Agre Bergman & Fuentes, LLP, a partner at Kasowitz Benson Torres LLP, and a litigator at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison.

EDUCATION

• New York University School of Law, J.D., 1992

• University of Dayton, B.A., 1989

• Law clerk to the Honorable Charles Sifton, U.S. District Judge for the Eastern District of New York, 1992-93

ADMISSIONS

• State Bar of New York

• U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit

• U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit

• U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit

• U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York

• U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York

HONORS

• Lawdragon, Top 500 Leading Litigators, 2025

• Superlawyers, 2025