About Michael Ferrara

Mr. Michael A. Ferrara joined the University of San Diego School of Law Board of Visitors in fall of 2004. Mr. Ferrara is the owner of The Ferrara Law Firm L.L.C. and is admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court, the New Jersey Supreme Court, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court and the Federal Courts. Mr. Ferrara previously owned and operated a cellular telephone company in Texas, taught business law at Camden County College, and traveled throughout Russia teaching the newly democratic country how to implement a mortgage system to increase home ownership. He is a former U.S. Naval officer and a Vietnam veteran. Mr. Ferrara graduated from Villanova University in 1964 with a B.S. in Mathematics and received his J.D. from the University of San Diego School of Law in 1972.

Mr. Ferrara is the founder and former chair of ATLA New Jersey Legal PAC, the lawyer’s Political Action Committee. He is a past president of ATLA-NJ, the New Jersey Trial Lawyers Association (now NJAJ), a diplomat of the American Board of Trial Advocates (ABOTA) and past president of South Jersey ABOTA Chapter, Master of the Camden Inns of Court, and a past president of the Civil Justice Foundation.   He is a past chair of the New Jersey State Bar Association Medical Malpractice Committee.

Mr. Ferrara is a Fellow of the International Academy of Trial Attorneys, one of 500 selected in the world. Mr. Ferrara was awarded the “AV” [highest] rating by Martindale-Hubbell, The Gold Medal for Distinguished Achievement by ATLA-NJ in 1992 and The 2001 Trial Bar Award to outstanding trial attorneys presented by the Trial Attorneys of New Jersey (TANJ). He served on Senator Corzine, Lautenberg, and Torricelli’s Senate Federal Judicial Selection Advisory Committee, the Board of the Amigos de Jesús orphanage in Honduras, and the Board of the San Miguel School in Camden, N.J.

Mr. Ferrara is frequently asked to lecture for ATLA, now AAJ, the New Jersey Institute of Continuing Legal Education (ICLE) (recipient of their Distinguished Service Award in 2015),  the National College of Trial Advocacy, the Practicing Law Institute (PLI), and many state trial lawyer organizations. He has published many articles dealing with the law.

He is married and resides with Penny, his wife of 46 years, in Marlton, New Jersey. They have five children, Michael, Mary, John, Anne and Jennie, and four grandchildren.