E. Michelle Drake

Biography

E. Michelle Drake is an Executive Shareholder. She founded and manages Berger Montague’s second-largest office, located in Minneapolis. With career settlements and verdicts valued in the billions, Ms. Drake has had great success in a wide variety of cases. She chairs the firm’s Credit Reporting and Background Checks Practice Group and co-chairs the firm’s Consumer Protection Group and its Technology, Privacy and Data Breach Practice Group.  

Ms. Drake has practiced law for more than twenty years and holds degrees from Harvard College, Harvard Law School, and Oxford University. Possessing a rare combination of an elite academic pedigree and real-world trial skills, Ms. Drake has successfully gone toe-to-toe with some of the world’s most powerful companies. She began the practice of law by defending high-stakes criminal cases as a public defender in Atlanta, Georgia, and has also represented people facing the death penalty, including at trial. Ms. Drake has never lost her desire to litigate on the side of the “little guy.” She is empathetic towards her clients and unyielding in her desire to win.

Ms. Drake has extensive experience representing consumers in MDL proceedings and class actions. In total, Ms. Drake has served as lead or co-lead class counsel in over fifty class actions and has achieved relief for consumers valued in the billions of dollars. She is currently leading numerous consumer protection class actions around the country—including representing hundreds of thousands of doctors and medical providers whose medical practices were decimated when United Health Group shut down Change Healthcare in the wake of the largest healthcare data breach in history. Ms. Drake also serves as lead class counsel for hundreds of thousands of individuals falsely labeled as deceased by TransUnion, an all too common problem with credit reporting. She has also represented hundreds of thousands of individuals falsely labeled as terrorists, narcotics traffickers, and criminals. She led landmark litigation against all three of the major credit bureaus, resulting in industry-wide reform in the reporting of public records, and practice changes that provided billions of dollars in benefits to impacted consumers.

Through her dogged representation of her clients and her dedication to achieving great results, Ms. Drake has earned the respect of her peers. She is consistently named to the annual lists of The Best Lawyers of America, Top 50 Women Minnesota Super Lawyers, and Super Lawyers. Ms. Drake is routinely invited to present at continuing legal education seminars, and has presented at dozens of national conferences. She has been quoted in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the National Law Journal, and her cases have been named as “Lawsuits of the Year” by Minnesota Law & Politics. Ms. Drake is also dedicated to public service. She currently serves as the Chair of the Board of Directors of the Southern Center for Human Rights.

Ms. Drake’s resume is available here.