In his 34-year legal career, Mike Gay has tried dozens of cases, both jury and bench, in federal and state courts. Mike has also arbitrated a number of matters and handled several contested injunction hearings. While most of his career has been spent in Florida, he started practicing law in Houston in 1990. It was there that he was fortunate enough to learn from some extremely talented trial lawyers and first-chaired his first jury trial. In 1995, he relocated to Orlando and began practicing at Foley & Lardner LLP where he continued his practice as a trial lawyer. While he still lists Business Litigation & Dispute Resolution as his primary Practice Group, given his significant trial experience — in addition to traditional complex commercial litigation — he has handled trade secret cases, restrictive covenant cases, trusts and estate litigation, defamation cases, and intellectual property cases. One of his most notable cases was representing the trustees of the Robert Rauschenberg Revocable Trust. The case involved the trustee fees owed to the trustees for managing the trust assets, which included a significant collection of Mr. Rauschenberg’s artwork valued at over $2 billion. It was reported at the time that the trustees’ fees awarded to Foley’s clients were the largest trustees’ fees awarded in the country.

Mike believes that every case involves two competing versions of the same story. Every jury and every judge is looking for a lawyer who can guide them through the facts to the correct and just outcome. It is the trial lawyer’s job to become the trusted story-teller, doing so by not only coming up with the most compelling theme for the trial but by reinforcing that theme in voir dire, with the opening statement, in every direct and cross-examination and with a closing argument that hopefully, by this point in the trial, the jury expects to hear.