Michael Naughton is an attorney and partner at North Coast Legal, PLC. Mike is a trial lawyer at the leading edge of artificial intelligence and digital evidence in criminal practice. He defends clients in Michigan’s most serious cases — terrorism, complex criminal sexual conduct, wrongful death, and federal matters — where the outcome increasingly depends on how well a defense team can challenge bodycam footage, AI-generated reports, cell phone forensics, and digital surveillance evidence that can run thousands of pages.
Mike’s appellate work has taken him to the Michigan Court of Appeals, the Michigan Supreme Court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and the United States Supreme Court, with a focus on Fourth Amendment, digital privacy, and emerging technology issues. He served on the Michigan Judicial Institute’s Generative AI Task Force, sits on the Board of the ACLU of Michigan, and writes for the ABA Criminal Justice Magazine on artificial intelligence and criminal practice. He helped build the indigent defense compliance infrastructure for Northern Michigan under the Michigan Indigent Defense Commission.
Mike is also the founder of Justice Optimized, where he develops AI and visualization technology for use in criminal litigation — including discovery analysis tools used by public defender offices, body camera reporting infrastructure, and volumetric scene reconstructions presented as evidence in court. That work is not a side venture. It is the source of an unusual technical fluency that shapes how Mike approaches every case: he doesn’t simply cross-examine officers about AI-generated reports — he understands how those reports are produced, where they fail, and how to expose those failures to a jury.
For clients facing serious charges where complex evidence will determine the outcome, that combination — appellate-level technical knowledge, trial-tested courtroom experience, and direct work building the tools the system uses — is genuinely rare.
The seriousness of a charge is exactly the reason a defendant deserves the most rigorous, best-prepared defense available. That conviction drives every case Mike takes.
Affiliations and Associations
Secretary, ACLU of Michigan (2025)
Michigan Judicial Institute, Generative AI Task Force, (2024)
ACLU of Michigan, Board of Directors (2023 - Present)
Michigan Judicial Institute, Generative AI and Michigan Courts Working Group Member (2024)
Generative, Augmented and Multimodal: Michigan Criminal Defense Practice and Emerging Technologies, Michigan State Appellate Defender's Office (June, 2024)
AI Uses and Challenges In Trial Practice, Virginia State Bar Conference (May, 2023)
Understanding Generative AI, Grand Traverse Bar Association Lunch and Learn (April, 2024)
Arkansas Public Defender's Association, Update on Artificial Intelligence for Arkansas Public Defenders (November, 2023)
Privacy 2021: You May Have to Think Twice with that Phone Recording, ICLE Family Law Institute (November, 2021)
Appeared on Detroit ABC affiliate WXYZ as an expert for a live, in-studio interview on the Target credit card breach (December, 2013)
Buttressing Your Investigation with Cell Phone Data, Institute for Criminal Justice Education, Auburn University, Alabama (September, 2013)
Seeing is Believing: Presenting Electronic Evidence to a Jury, Upper Michigan Legal Institute (May, 2013)
ESI as a Teaching Tool for Juries, Michigan Young Lawyers Section (June, 2013)
Opening the Large Paper Case in the Digital Age, CJA Panel Attorneys Seminar (September, 2012)
FBA Panel Discussion with Judge Robert Cleland, Judge David Lawson, Daniel Lemisch, Chief of the Criminal Division (U.S. Attorney’s Office, Detroit), FBI Special Agent Matthew Zentz and Joseph Richotte on ESI and federal criminal practice (May, 2012)
Criminal Defense Series: Trial Strategy and Tactics, ICLE (June, 2012)
The Nimble and the Lazy: ESI and Criminal Practice, Criminal Defense Attorneys of Michigan Spring Conference (March, 2012)
Advanced Overview of New Forms of Electronic Discovery, Criminal Defense Attorneys of Michigan Fall Conference (November, 2011)
Electronic Discovery, Criminal Defense Attorneys of Michigan, Spring Conference (March, 2011)
