Mickey Pohl is head of Jones Day's product liability and tort litigation practice worldwide. He was Partner-in-Charge of the Pittsburgh Office from 1989 to 2003 when he then assumed certain worldwide responsibilities within Jones Day. With more than 30 years of litigation experience in a wide variety of cases around the globe, he has become the quintessential first-chair, big case litigator. He is listed in The Best Lawyers in America (2007 ed.) in two categories: commercial litigation and product liability litigation. He also has considerable experience in counseling corporations, nonprofit entities, and their senior executives.

Although Mickey specializes in handling complex civil litigation, he has extensive experience in antitrust, governance, telecommunications, corporate, mining, environmental, and energy litigation and has handled government administrative and corporate criminal investigations. He has particular experience in the handling of catastrophic product liability and toxic tort litigation, including the coordination of multicase national projects, class actions, and cases involving punitive damage issues. His litigation experience also includes the litigation of matters in large bankruptcy proceedings and counseling major corporations on litigation organization, management and strategy, avoidance, and alternative dispute resolution procedures.

During the course of his career Mickey has dealt effectively with courts in numerous jurisdictions, having tried cases in Florida, Montana, Hawaii, Pennsylvania, Ohio, California, and Rhode Island and as counsel of record in jury cases in Massachusetts, New York, Wisconsin, Oklahoma, Texas, Washington, D.C., Michigan, Illinois, Puerto Rico, Maryland, Mississippi, Virginia, Louisiana, and Minnesota. He has also counseled clients on U.S. litigation questions in Europe, South America, the Far East, the Caribbean, and in North Africa.

He is a member of the American Law Institute. He has been a member of the American Bar Association and committees in its Litigation Section. He has been a guest faculty member at trial advocacy programs at various law schools, including Emory University and Hofstra University, and in programs of the National Institute for Trial Advocacy. He has published a number of articles and is one of the contributing authors to the book Conflicts of Interest — A Trial Lawyer's Guide, which was written as a project of the Trial Evidence Committee of the Litigation Section of the American Bar Association. He has been chairman of an ABA National Institute on Evidence, has been a guest speaker at national symposia on tort litigation, and has been a speaker at continuing legal education programs in Pennsylvania, New York, and Ohio. He is a member of the Pennsylvania Bar Association and the Allegheny County Bar Association.

Mickey has extensive appellate experience having argued cases in the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the First, Third, Fifth, Sixth, Eleventh, and District of Columbia Circuits; in the Supreme Courts of Pennsylvania and Ohio; the Maryland Court of Appeals; and in the intermediate appellate courts of Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, Maryland, and Missouri.

In 2001, he was appointed by the judges of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania as their selection to serve on the Lawyers Advisory Committee of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. He served as chairman of that Committee in 2002. He was appointed by the justices of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to serve on its Continuing Legal Education Board, where he served as the secretary-treasurer.

While living in Cleveland, he was named as one of Cleveland's "Most Interesting People" by Cleveland magazine and as an associate was named by the Legal Times of Washington as one of America's "Young Superstars in Litigation." He is currently a director of Jura Corporation and Lord Corporation and served as a member of the board of directors of AMSCO International (NYSE) from 1990 to 1995. He has served as a member of the board of trustees of the Franciscan University of Steubenville and was vice chairman of the board of trustees of Gannon University. He was chairman of the board of trustees of Seton Hill University from 1997 to 2002 and is a member of the board of the Foundation Maria Thron in Austria. He was chairman of the board of directors of the National Fatherhood Initiative from 2003 to 2004. He has served on the board of Catholic Charities of Pittsburgh.

He has made frequent television guest appearances on litigation matters and appeared in a feature on MTV concerning the presidential election and his role as a legal advisor to Steve Forbes. He has been quoted in numerous publications, including Forbes Magazine, The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, and The Wall Street Journal on developments in the law and politics. He was profiled in the November 1995 issue of The American Lawyer for his victory in the U.S. Court of Appeals in a case where his client was suing an assistant U.S. attorney and U.S. Postal Inspection Service agents. He was part of the litigation team that represented Ronald Reagan in one of the first cases in the United States under the Federal Election Campaign Laws. He was employed briefly as a newspaper reporter prior to entering military service.

He is a frequent public speaker on matters of current interest. Recent public speaking activities include a television appearance on separation of church and state for a cable television network and a speech at Gannon University on death penalty issues. A motivational speech he delivered at the awards banquet of the Pennsylvania High School Academic Sports League was made into a half hour program on a public cable TV station in Pennsylvania as was an address he gave to public school teachers and staff in Pennsylvania in 2004. He has served as a member of the Alumni Council of Princeton University and was the graduate president of the Princeton Class of 1970 from 1990 to 1995.

He was honored in 2003 as a "Champion of Justice" by Catholic Charities of Pittsburgh. He received Seton Hill University's Medal of Excellence and has been honored by Gannon University, which named him "Honorary Alumnus of the Year" in 2003. He has consulted on projects in Europe and in 2003 was named a Knight of St. Gregory the Great by the Vatican.

When The American Lawyer magazine named Jones Day the "Best Litigation Department in America" in January 2002, his victories in more than 30 General Electric cases were cited. Also cited was the lead paint litigation in which Jones Day represents The Sherwin-Williams Company. This is a multijurisdiction, multi-office project where Mickey heads the Jones Day team. When Jones Day was named as "The Best Firm" in the nation in product liability, certain of his cases were featured, and he was pictured in the article. He serves on the board of Rand Corporation's Institute for Civil Justice.

Mickey has twice been asked in the last five years to conduct private, binding mediations in large cases and, in that role, conducted nonjury trials and rendered opinions.

He was designated by the United States Golf Association and Oakmont Country Club to serve as chairman of the 2007 United States Open to be held at Oakmont.