Michael G. Messerschmidt practices labor and employment law, advising a broad range of public and private sector employers in the fields of health care, forest products, manufacturing, retail, municipal government, transportation and communications. He is chairman of the firm's Labor and Employment Practice Group.

Michael advises on hiring and employee retention policies, personnel policies, discipline and termination issues, wage and hour issues, collective bargaining agreements and compliance with employment discrimination and civil rights laws.

As Labor Counsel for the Maine Turnpike Authority, he has negotiated fifteen labor contracts in the past seventeen years.

He is a former Maine Assistant Attorney General and worked in the Criminal Division. In that position, he served as Chief Counsel to the State Department of Public Safety and also prosecuted white-collar crimes.

Michael is recognized in the Chambers USA Guide to America’s Leading Business Lawyers, the highly regarded legal directory which ranks firms and individual attorneys. He is also listed in Woodward/White's The Best Lawyers in America.

He was born in Portland and graduated cum laude from Harvard University. In 1978, he graduated from the University of Maine School of Law, where he was a member of the Law Review. He joined Preti Flaherty in 1980.

Michael is a member of the Maine State Bar Association and its Labor and Employment section, and the American Bar Association and its Labor and Employment Law Section.

He has written and lectured extensively before management audiences at programs presented by the Council on Education in Management, the National Business Institute, the Maine Human Resource Management Association, and other organizations. The staff of the Maine Human Rights Commission selected Michael to serve as a presenter on defense practice issues before the Commission at the MHRC's first Fair Employment Practice Seminar.

Michael is a founding member of the Second Generation of Maine, an organization of children of Holocaust survivors. He is a past president of the Holocaust Human Rights Center of Maine, and past president of the Portland Players Community Theatre.  He is currently Chair of the Allocations Committee of the Jewish Community Alliance and a Board Member of the Portland Stage Company. 

Admissions
Maine; New Hampshire; U.S. Court of Appeals, First Circuit

Education
J.D., University of Maine, 1978
B.A., Harvard College, 1975 (Cum Laude)