Michelle L. Burton

Michelle L. Burton is the managing partner at Burton Kelley LLP, where she focuses her practice on insurance law. Located in San Diego, she provides representation to insurance companies throughout California. Admitted to practice in both California and Washington, Ms. Burton is also admitted to practice before the U.S. District Courts for the Central and Southern Districts of California and the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington. She has been certified as a specialist in appellate law by the Board of Legal Specialization of The State Bar of California.

Ms. Burton provides defense representation to her insurance clients in cases involving coverage disputes, bad faith claims and other related matters. At both the trial and appellate levels, she has been able to obtain successful results in many of her cases, earning her an "Excellent" peer review rating through Avvo. In one representative case, she obtained a verdict for a client that had been sued by a homeowners insurance policy holder who had asked for more than $9 million in compensatory and punitive damages after her client had denied coverage. In a case for the same client that reached the appellate level, Ms. Burton was able to obtain a reversal of a lower court's decision that had awarded the plaintiff $1.9 million.

Outside of the courtroom, Ms. Burton has assisted her insurance company clients in drafting amendments to policies in order to comply with statutory changes, and she has trained their employees on the state's fair claims settlement practices regulations. A graduate of San Diego State University, where she majored in political science and received a Bachelor of Arts with distinction in 1991, she obtained her legal education at California Western School of Law and was awarded her Juris Doctor in 1996.