When Experience Matters ®
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Areas of Practice
Practice-Specific Experience
Education
  • Harvard Law School, J.D., magna cum laude, 1988, Sears Prize Winner (1986)
  • Princeton University, A.B., magna cum laude, 1985, Phi Beta Kappa
Judicial Clerkships
  • Justice Thurgood Marshall, US Supreme Court, 1989-1990
  • Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg, US Court of Appeals, DC Circuit, 1988-1989
Bar & Court Admissions
  • New York
  • District of Columbia

Michael Vatis

Partner

750 Seventh Avenue
New York NY 10019
TEL: 212.506.3927
FAX: 212.506.3950

Michael Vatis is a partner in the New York office of Steptoe & Johnson LLP. His practice focuses on privacy, security, and technology issues, and on Supreme Court and appellate litigation.

Mr. Vatis is a magna cum laude graduate of Princeton University (1985) and Harvard Law School (1988). At Harvard, he served as Supervising Editor of the Harvard Law Review and was a winner of the Sears Prize.

Following law school, Mr. Vatis clerked for then-Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit and for Justice Thurgood Marshall on the US Supreme Court. He then spent three years in private practice in Washington, concentrating on Supreme Court and appellate litigation. In that capacity, he wrote numerous petitions for certiorari and briefs on the merits in various federal and state courts, and delivered oral arguments in federal courts of appeals.

In 1993, Mr. Vatis returned to government service, initially as Special Counsel at the Department of Defense. There he advised the Secretary of Defense and General Counsel on sensitive Department policies and coordinated the Department’s litigation strategy on those issues with attorneys from the Department of Justice. He received the Secretary of Defense Award for Excellence in recognition of his work at the Department.

In 1994, Mr. Vatis moved to the Department of Justice, where he served as Associate Deputy Attorney General, advising the Attorney General on national security and technology matters. In that capacity, he also worked closely with attorneys from the Office of the Solicitor General and the Civil Division in overseeing nationwide litigation over Department of Defense policies. In 1998, Mr. Vatis was named the Director of the National Infrastructure Protection Center, the first government organization responsible for investigating and responding to cyber attacks on government and private sector computer networks.

In 2001, Mr. Vatis left government to return to the practice of law, while simultaneously continuing to work on national security and technology issues in various capacities. In particular, he served as Director of the Institute for Security Technology Studies at Dartmouth, a federally funded counterterrorism research institute from 2001 to 2003. He then served as the Executive Director of the Markle Foundation Task Force on National Security in the Information Age, a select group of corporate executives, former government officials, and technologists that advised the government on how to use intelligence and information technology more effectively to combat terrorism. Recommendations from the Task Force’s report, of which Mr. Vatis was the principal author, were adopted by the 9/11 Commission and incorporated in the 2004 Intelligence Reform Act.

Mr. Vatis has regularly testified before congressional committees on counterterrorism, intelligence, and cyber security issues. He is also interviewed often on television, radio, and in print media, and has been a guest lecturer at many prestigious law schools and universities and a frequent speaker at industry conferences worldwide.

Noteworthy

  • Ranked, Chambers Global 2008, The World's Leading Lawyers for Business, US Privacy & Data Security

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