Michael Kanovitz

Michael Kanovitz is a founding partner at Loevy + Loevy, and a lawyer whose work sits at the intersection of civil rights, complex class actions, and emerging areas of technology law. Over more than two decades, he has built a practice defined not only by results—hundreds of millions of dollars in recoveries—but by a willingness to take difficult, high-risk cases to verdict when others would settle. Courts have described his advocacy as “top-notch” and credited him with achieving “extraordinary results” for his clients.

At Loevy & Loevy, Mr. Kanovitz plays a central role in expanding the firm’s work into new and innovative areas of litigation, including artificial intelligence, online gambling, cyber-civil rights, and cryptocurrency-related fraud. Consistently raising the defining issues of the day—where the law has not yet caught up to changes in technology or power—his practice operates at the leading edge of the law, and is helping to shape the legal landscape for the 21^st century.

In Rogers v. BNSF Railway Co., he served as trial counsel in the first biometric privacy case ever tried to verdict, obtaining a $228 million judgment in a case widely regarded as a turning point in biometric privacy enforcement. In In re Clearview AI, Inc. Consumer Privacy Litigation, he helped pioneer a novel settlement structure designed to give class members a stake in the value created from their biometric data—an approach that may influence how courts address claims involving artificial intelligence and data extraction. In Simmons v. Motorola Solutions, Inc., he served as lead counsel in biometric privacy litigation involving facial recognition technology, achieving a $47.5 million settlement. His current work continues to build on these results, focusing on how the law should respond when companies build products using individuals’ data, identity, or creative work without consent.

Mr. Kanovitz has also litigated nationally significant constitutional cases, including Vance v. Rumsfeld, which challenged the detention and treatment of U.S. citizens by the U.S. military. He also has substantial experience in whistleblower litigation. He was a key member of the trial team in a False Claims Act case against Fluor Corporation, representing military veterans and helping secure a judgment in favor of the United States after more than a decade of litigation.

As co-founder of the largest civil rights law firm in the nation with no paying clients, Mr. Kanovitz’s approach to practicing law is reflected in a series of cases that have combined hundreds of millions in verdicts and settlement with broad societal impact. In Young v. County of Cook, he led the litigation and trial of a sweeping class action challenging systemic unconstitutional practices in the Cook County Jail, ultimately securing more than $100 million in recoveries for the class. His trial work also includes the wrongful conviction case Gillispie v. Miami Township, in which he obtained a $45 million jury verdict,one of the largest civil rights verdicts in Ohio history. Alongside these matters, he has maintained an active trial practice in catastrophic injury and insurance coverage litigation. In Fox v. Barnes, he secured more than $20 million in a case arising from the failure to provide critical medical care to a prisoner in custody.

Before co-founding Loevy & Loevy, Mr. Kanovitz began his career at a corporate law firm, where he developed the analytical discipline and precision that continue to shape his practice. He left that path to pursue contingency-based litigation, guided by the view that the most capable lawyers should be willing to stand behind their cases and take them to trial.

In addition to his litigation work, Mr. Kanovitz co-authored a constitutional law treatise published by LexisNexis and used to train law enforcement officers nationwide. He is also the lead inventor on an international patent involving legal technology designed to enable computerized systems to comply with court orders.

He has been selected to Illinois Super Lawyers for more than a decade and was named to the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin’s “40 Under 40.”

Mr. Kanovitz received his J.D. with honors from Cornell Law School.

Bar Admissions

• U.S. Supreme Court, 2013
• U.S. Court of Appeals 6th Circuit, 1996
• U.S. Court of Appeals 7th Circuit, 2001
• U.S. Court of Appeals 8th Circuit, 2001
• U.S. Court of Appeals District of Columbia Circuit, 2012
• Illinois, 2001
• Kentucky, 1994
• U.S. District Court Northern District of Illinois, 2001
• U.S. District Court Western District of Kentucky, 1994