Hon. Michael S. Berg (Ret.)

Hon. Michael S. Berg (Ret.) joins Signature Resolution following a career built on both sides of the criminal justice system: more than three decades as a criminal defense attorney handling matters across the full spectrum of complexity, followed by an appointment as a United States Magistrate Judge for the Southern District of California, where he presided over civil case management, discovery disputes, and a substantial docket of settlement conferences. That dual command, of how cases are built and argued, and of how courts ultimately resolve them, gives Judge Berg a practical, first-hand understanding of what parties are actually weighing when they consider the cost of continued litigation against the certainty of resolution. He carries that command with an easy, approachable warmth that puts people at ease from the first moment in the room.

Judge Berg believes genuine connection is what actually moves a case, and he builds it deliberately: every session begins with real conversation, time spent simply getting to know the people in the room before the dispute itself enters the discussion. That early investment is purposeful rather than a delay. It puts people at ease quickly, particularly parties unfamiliar with formal proceedings, and it creates the trust that lets the substantive work move efficiently once it begins. Judge Berg carries that same investment in people through the length of a case. He brings considerable patience to a negotiation that stalls, treating an unresolved first session as simply part of the process rather than a failure, and he will return to the table as many times as it takes. Parties consistently find in him someone who is direct about where their case stands, but who never loses sight of the fact that a legal dispute is also a deeply human one.

As a criminal defense attorney, Judge Berg represented clients across the full economic spectrum and handled nearly every category of criminal matter over the course of 37 years in practice. That work gave him an unusually broad education in how to read and connect with people, regardless of background or circumstance.

In 2018, he was appointed Magistrate Judge for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California, where his docket ranged from complex mass tort matters including multi-district litigation to smaller consumer disputes, and built a track record for moving cases toward resolution that had proven resistant to settlement elsewhere.

Now at Signature Resolution, Judge Berg offers parties the benefit of a jurist who has already spent a career turning resistant cases into resolved ones. As a mediator, he reads people accurately and puts them at ease quickly, brings judicial perspective to what a stalled case actually needs to move on, and treats every party’s full understanding and comfort as essential to reaching real resolution, not incidental to it. For attorneys managing civil disputes where the stakes and the personalities are equally complex, that combination of legal rigor and genuine human investment is what carries cases across the finish line.