Michael is a deputy district attorney in Los Angeles County, where he has represented the People of California in over eighty preliminary hearings, dozens of motions, and trials. As a law clerk with the office’s Major Crimes Division, he assisted prosecutors in the Robert Durst murder trial.
Michael is also a senior research fellow at the California Constitution Center—a nonpartisan academic research center dedicated to the study of the state constitution and high court. His scholarly work has been published in the Los Angeles Daily Journal, The Recorder, blog posts, and law review articles.
As a student at Berkeley Law, Michael externed for the Honorable Kim McLane Wardlaw of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. In this role, he conducted legal research and drafted bench memoranda regarding pending decisions.
Michael graduated magna cum laude from UC San Diego with a degree in Cognitive Science. As an undergraduate, Michael worked as a research assistant in two labs focused on language-processing and wrote his honors thesis about cognitive bias in parole decisions. He was a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellow at Caltech.
Education
J.D., UC Berkeley School of Law (2019)
B.A., UC San Diego (2016)
Michael J Belcher is not teaching any Law courses in Fall 2024.