Truman, Craig L.

Michael G. Trachtman graduated with honors from both Dickinson College, in 1971, and the Villanova University School of Law, in 1974, where he was selected to serve as Case and Comment Editor of the Villanova Law Review, in which he published two articles. Upon his graduation, he was elected by the faculty to the Order of the Coif (a national law honorary), the law school's highest honor.

Mr. Trachtman's practice focuses on business litigation, employment law, and counseling business clients on the avoidance of claims and liabilities. He has successfully handled numerous trials and business transactions on behalf of companies and individuals engaged in a wide variety of business enterprises such as, for instance, manufacturing, e-commerce, accounting, law, health care, software development, consulting, insurance, wholesale distribution, celebrity management, retail sales, architecture, engineering, banking, construction and real estate development. He serves as general counsel to the MidAtlantic Employers' Association, an organization of over 700 companies.

Mr. Trachtman holds the highest Martindale-Hubbell peer review ratings for professional ability and ethical standards, and has been recognized as a Philadelphia Superlawyer by Philadelphia Magazine. He has been appointed by the Court of Common Pleas of Montgomery County to serve as a Discovery Master in civil litigation, hearing and deciding courtroom arguments pertaining to discovery disputes. He has served as a Director of the Montgomery Bar Association and chair of the Montgomery Bar Association's Rules of Civil Court Committee and Bench/Bar Committee. He was a founder and original Board member of the Desmond J. McTighe Inn of Court, an institution devoted to the improvement of litigation techniques.

Mr. Trachtman also serves as an adjunct professor of law at the Villanova University School of Law.

He is the author of What Every Executive Better Know About the Law, originally published by Simon and Schuster and republished in 2009 by the MidAtlantic Employers' Association. The book focuses on preventive law and litigation avoidance techniques for businesses.

He is the author of The Supremes' Greatest Hits: The 37 Supreme Court Cases That Most Directly Affect Your Life, published by Sterling Publishing, a subsidiary of Barnes & Noble. PBS featured the book as an adjunct to its nationally-televised series on the Supreme Court. The Supremes' is in its second printing, it has been featured by organizations ranging from The Pennsylvania Bar Institute to the Savannah Book Festival, and is used as a classroom text in various colleges, universities and high schools.

He is the author of The Four Mistakes: Avoiding the Legal Landmines that Lead to Business Disaster, also published by Sterling. The book addresses the most damaging law-related business mistakes, how to avoid them, and how to capitalize when competitors make them.

Mr. Trachtman is also the author of numerous articles published by business and professional organizations, and is a frequent lecturer to business and professional groups throughout the country on topics pertaining to the intersections between law and business. For example, Mr. Trachtman was selected by Reed Elsevier, Inc., the parent company of Lexis/Nexis, to author two sections in the company's XpertHR Employment Law Manual: Employer Liability, and Mediation, under Pennsylvania law. The Pennsylvania Bar Institute, the educational arm of the Pennsylvania Bar Association, selected Mr. Trachtman to serve as a panelist or moderator on a variety of seminar topics, including the first one hundred days of the Obama administration (along with Michael Isikoff and Byron York, among others), litigation techniques, constitutional law, law firm management, and professional ethics.

In 2007, Mr. Trachtman received a special award from the Pennsylvania Bar Association, the Clarity Award, given for "the use of plain English in promoting the justice system."

Mr. Trachtman has been featured on radio and television programs throughout the country, including the Michael Smerconish Program, Daybreak USA (USA Network), Simply Put (Bloomberg Radio), Culture Shocks (Genesis Communications Network), and NPR.