I make complex communications work for their intended audiences.
What I Do & Why
I’m the person counsel, experts, technical teams, and business leaders hire to make high-stakes narratives land with audiences who decide outcomes.
Brought In Early
I work with stakeholders to establish the structure, logic, voice, and visual elements required to achieve desired goals.
Brought in to fix a Draft
I diagnose where the document holds and where it breaks. I then deconstruct and rebuild until it meets its purpose.
Why?
Because decision makers cannot agree with my client’s position if they can’t follow what that position is.
how i help
Ensuring High-Stakes Documents
Meet Their Purpose
Before I begin, I work with stakeholders to clarify requirements, intended audience, and the standards by which the final product will be judged.
Only once all parameters are clear do I start work on the structure, logic, language, and visual presentation of the document itself.
My work typically requires a single round of client feedback.
Visit my library to learn about how cognitive science informs structure, logic, language, and visual considerations. It also has factsheets on where high-stakes documents often go wrong and strategies for getting them right from the start.
Recent Work
Selected Recent Projects
01
Expert Damages Valuation
In a nine-figure expropriation case before the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague, counsel engaged an independent expert to create a damages valuation under significant time pressure. Working with the expert, I sat in on meetings with counsel and then ghostwrote the report, structuring the analytical framework, assumptions, methodology, and conclusions to ensure technical rigor was preserved while points of vulnerability under scrutiny were reduced.
02
Expert Testimony
In a twelve-figure tariff international arbitration, an independent expert was scheduled to deliver thirty minutes of testimony before cross-examination by a coordinated opposing team of more than ten lawyers. The expert’s initial presentation strategy created unnecessary exposure by foregrounding dense data at the expense of narrative control. I redefined the strategy and redesigned the presentation aid so it supported, rather than competed with, oral evidence.
03
Administrative Turnaround
An aerospace engineer faced imminent denial of an EB-2 National Interest Waiver petition after counsel cited the Dhanasar framework but failed to satisfy any of its criteria. A personal statement from the petitioner became the sole mechanism for correcting the defect within the existing case. Working with the petitioner, I turned the statement into a de facto new petition by defining a proposed endeavor in line with Dhanasar and backing it up with supporting evidence. The work was submitted by counsel without substantive revision. The petition was approved two weeks later.
about me
I'm Michie
I’ve worked across markets and governments in the United States, the United Kingdom, and multiple African nations. My fifteen years living and working overseas indelibly altered my practical understanding of how information has to be, and should be, tailored to specific audiences to achieve objectives.
I am comfortable in high-stakes environments and have extensive experience working with counsel, development and bid teams, C-suite executives, and elite leaders, including heads of state, Nobel laureates, and financial powerbrokers capable of moving global markets.
My favorite professional challenge is whatever project currently sits on my plate.
Schedule
A
Consultation
Let me know when you are ready to discuss your project. I live on the East Coast of the United States and work with clients around the world.
michie@michiekane.com