Michael Burshteyn

San Francisco

Litigation

Michael Burshteyn traces his path to litigation back to a debate podium at UC Berkeley. When his competitive debate career ended, he saw the courtroom as the natural next stage.

"I went to law school because it was the closest thing to professional debate," he said.

Burshteyn was admitted to the bar in 2013 and built a practice at the intersection of technology, privacy and emerging digital markets. His background shaped both his specialty and his method. Growing up in the Bay Area, he proofread technical documentation for software his father was building. Years later, he and his father co-founded CryptoMove, a data security startup that raised more than $9 million in venture capital funding and generated seven figures in revenue working with early adopters including the Air Force and Fortune 500 companies in the entertainment and financial sectors.

That experience in the startup world now informs how he approaches disputes. "This experience helps me to approach technology disputes from a practical perspective," he said.

His litigation practice spans crypto, AI, data privacy and unauthorized access cases. As a junior associate, he worked on scraping and Computer Fraud and Abuse Act matters for companies including Meta and Craigslist. He later became one of the first lawyers to litigate cryptocurrency disputes, handling criminal cases involving market manipulation and fraud alongside civil claims touching antitrust, defamation and product liability.

His most complex matter to date has been the Mango Markets litigation, in which he serves as lead counsel for Mango Labs across eight federal cases in the Southern District of New York, the District of Wyoming and the District of Puerto Rico. The series of cases arose after he helped Mango respond to a $114 million market manipulation attack and has since expanded to address questions of first impression -- including whether a decentralized finance organization constitutes a cognizable legal entity and the scope of the CFAA as applied to crypto fund freezes.

Burshteyn first-chaired a multi-week preliminary injunction bench trial in Puerto Rico in connection with the matter. At the close of proceedings, the court offered remarks from the bench: "Outstanding closing remarks. I can't describe what you guys have left me to deal with. It's indescribable, as a matter of fact. They don't prepare you in law school to handle a case like this."

Beyond crypto, he litigated the first California Consumer Privacy Act class action filed in the state in 2020 and has since handled dozens of privacy and data security matters. He also represents multiple companies in AI-related unauthorized access disputes, where he has defeated several temporary restraining orders while litigating novel questions under the CFAA and online trespass doctrine.