Matthew Payok

Adjunct Professor
Law College Building
648 N. Shaw Lane Rm 368
East Lansing, MI 48824-1300
mkenp@msu.edu

  • Biography

    Matthew Payok is currently an attorney specialist in the Michigan Attorney General’s Corporate Oversight Division, working as a white-collar prosecutor and a civil litigation attorney. He ranks second in a unit of six veteran prosecutors, and helps supervise and guide the unit. In 2015, he received the Attorney General’s Extraordinary Achievement Award for a series of oil and gas leasing investigations that led to three separate antitrust and racketeering prosecutions, and ultimately ended in a series of pleas and $30M in victim restitution after a three-week jury trial against multinational corporate defendants. His focus includes securities fraud, antitrust, banking and insurance scams, and other business crime. Before joining the Attorney General, Mr. Payok served as Corporate Counsel for Capitol Bancorp, Ltd., a national bank holding company with a network of separately-chartered banks located in 14 states, where he managed outside litigation counsel in other states as well as handled local litigation along with a team of assistants. His time at Capitol Bancorp coincided with the Great Recession and the national banking and foreclosure crisis. Mr. Payok began his legal career in private practice at Willingham & Cote, P.C., where he started as an associate in 2004. He handled several kinds of litigation, with a focus on medical malpractice defense, insurance coverage, and civil appeals. He was promoted to Class B shareholder in 2007, and was named a Rising Star by Michigan Super Lawyers before he left private practice.

  • Degrees

    J.D. 2002, Michigan State University College of Law

  • Courses

    Trial Practice Institute - Trial I
    (Formerly DCL 534) Must be in the Trial Practice Institutue program. Because certain non-TPI courses duplicate the content of this course, students may not also receive academic credit for the following courses: Applied Evidence, Civil Trial Advocacy I, Civil Trial Advocacy II, Client Counseling and Interviewing, Criminal Trial Advocacy I - Pre-Trial, Criminal Trial Advocacy II - Trial II. A section fee of $350 will be assessed. This fee supports simulated exercises, including program’s final trials.

    Trial Practice Institute: Expert and Scientific Evidence
    (Formerly DCL 543) This course will present students with a discussion of the nature of forensic science and scientific evidence. Topics include: forensic science, scientific evidence, admissibility of scientific evidence, quality assurance and control. There will also be lectures on certain areas of forensic science that are often the subject of litigation. These include DNA, inferential statistics, traffic accident reconstruction, forensic engineering, forensic pathology, paternity testing and drunk driving. Must be in the Trial Practice Institute program. Because certain non-TPI courses duplicate the content of this course, students may not also receive academic credit for the following courses: Applied Evidence, Civil Trial Advocacy I, Civil Trial Advocacy II, Client Counseling and Interviewing, Criminal Trial Advocacy I - Pre-Trial, Criminal Trial Advocacy II - Trial II.

  • Bar Admission(s)

    Michigan