Trapasso , Barbara

With law offices in San Francisco and Oakland, California, Michael J. Tonsing is a successful employment lawyer, trial lawyer and business transactional lawyer. He has nearly three decades of practical experience in the law.

As an experienced litigator, Mike not only represents his own clients in court, but he also is associated for purpose of trial by other lawyers who value his courtroom experience and his ability to use modern courtroom technology. He is the author of over 60 articles, many of them dealing with technology issues, that have appeared in numerous legal newspapers, journals and magazines. For more than six years, Mike has written a regular column on technology for lawyers in The Federal Lawyer, the monthly magazine of the Federal Bar Association.

Mike also was instrumental in developing a breakthrough method to train employees in employment law topics that was featured in The New York Times and on CNN/Fortune. Continuing in that vein, he currently designs training modules on employment law topics for a highly regarded online human resources support company, LawRoom.com. He also serves as a senior consultant and employment law trainer at John Parry & Alexander, a Bay Area firm that provides a complete range of human resources services to Bay Area businesses.

Having been in firms as large as 400 lawyers, having been a sole practitioner, and having co-founded a small AV-rated commercial litigation and transactional firm in the East Bay, Mike was once identified as one of the Bay Area's top lawyers by the San Francisco Business Times.

Earlier in his career, Mike was a Supreme Court Fellow, serving under a grant from the American Bar Foundation and the Ford Foundation on the staff of Chief Justice Warren E. Burger at the Supreme Court of the United States in Washington, D.C. There, he won the prestigious Justice Tom C. Clark award for excellence. He then served as a litigator in the U.S. Attorney's Office in San Francisco for several years, representing the United States as a trial lawyer in federal court. Mike is also a former Administrative Law Judge for the State of California.

Mike also co-founded a highly regarded, American Bar Association accredited, college-level paralegal program that has trained literally thousands of adults as legal assistants. He taught in that program for more than two decades.

Beyond his accomplishments in the law, legal education and workplace training, Mike Tonsing has practical experience in business. In addition to heading his own law firm, he has also served for two years as the President and CEO of Hardhat Wholesale.com, an Oakland and Ontario (California) based corporation, wholesaling products to the construction industry over the Internet.

A former counterintelligence officer (rank of major, recipient of the Army Commendation Medal for meritorious service), Mike received his law degree from the University of San Francisco School of Law. He holds an M.A. in Political Philosophy and Government from Claremont Graduate University in Southern California.