Michal has a broad practice spanning both general commercial work and specialised areas, such as shipping, insolvency and investor-state arbitrations.
He acts in court proceedings, including in appeals where he draws on his experiences as a Judicial Assistant at the Supreme Court, as well as arbitral references held under various procedural rules, including LMAA, SCMA and UNCITRAL.
Recently, Michal acted as sole counsel in a three-day trial in the High Court, which involved him cross-examining five witnesses remotely by reason of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2018-19, he served as the Judicial Assistant assigned to Lord Reed (then Deputy President, now President of the Supreme Court). During this time, Michal worked on leading cases in a wide range of legal areas, including Volcafe [2018] UKSC 61 (interpretation of the Hague-Visby Rules), Vedanta [2019] UKSC 20 (jurisdiction in the context of a parent company’s liability for a subsidiary’s torts), Poole BC v GN [2019] UKSC 25 (assumption of responsibility in tort law), Taylor [2019] UKSC 51 (torture) and Marex [2020] UKSC 31 (reflective loss rule in company law).
From 2016 to 2020, Michal taught contract and tort law at a number of Oxford colleges, including as a Non-Stipendiary Lecturer at St Anne’s and as a Retaining Fee Lecturer at Somerville.
Prior to joining Twenty Essex, he received the Peter Taylor Scholarship 2015 for the BPTC, which is the largest scholarship awarded by Inner Temple.
When Michal was at Harvard Law School, he worked as a mediator in the Harvard Law School Mediation Programme, a Student Attorney in the Harvard Prison Legal Assistance Project, and a Judicial Intern in the Massachusetts Superior Court.
In 2015, Michal graduated from Oxford with, amongst others, the Gibbs Prize Proxime for the second highest performance in contract, tort, land and trusts and the Martin Wronker Prize for the best performance in tort.
Michal has experience dealing with untranslated documents in his cases, and he is able to advise clients if they are in German, Slovak or Czech.