Law 2024: MICHAEL M. YORK

Formerly a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter who covered federal courts for The Washington Post, York became an attorney in 1994 and started his own firm focused on corporate litigation and white-collar criminal cases. He became president of the state bar July 1, starting his one-year term after serving on the bar’s council and executive committee and chairing the legal ethics committee.

The state bar has more than 50,000 members — attorneys licensed to practice in Virginia — and evaluates judges and disciplines lawyers. York graduated from the University of Kentucky with a journalism degree and earned his law degree at the University of North Carolina. He and co-author Jeffrey A. Marx won the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting while employed with the Lexington Herald-Leader in Kentucky for a series of exposés on payoffs to UK basketball players.

York was retained as a legal counselor and adviser by Fairfax County Public Schools when a former student filed a federal Title IX lawsuit in 2019 claiming she was bullied, harassed and raped while attending middle school in 2011. A federal jury rejected her claims in April.