Selected as a Texas top lawyer
by H Texas Magazine, July 2005.

Mike Mallia was selected, in the category of Plaintiff Personal Injury: Malpractice, as a Texas Super Lawyer as published in the October 2004 issue of Texas Super Lawyers magazine. See his profile also at superlawyers.com.

Mike Mallia - The Best Lawyers in America

Selected by his peers, Mike Mallia is included in the 2003-2004 edition of The Best Lawyers in America. Best Lawyers is based on an exhaustive peer-review survey in which 15,000 leading attorneys throughout the country cast more that half a million "votes" on the legal abilities of other lawyers in their specialties, and because lawyers are not required to pay a fee to be listed, inclusion in Best Lawyers is considered a singular honor. In its tenth edition, Best Lawyers is the definitive guide to legal excellence in the United States.

Mike Mallia - HISD Volunteer of the Year 2003

Mike Mallia received the "Red Apple" award from Houston Independent School District for Volunteer of the Year for his work at JFK Elementary.

Mike Mallia - The Houston Lawyer -- November/December 2002
Local Hero - Michael P. Mallia
by Ruth Piller page 40

Some people take longer than others to get out of elementary school. Plaintiff's lawyer Michael P. Mallia has spent the better part of the last decade there.

Mallia, of the Mallia Law Firm, is one of the founders of the Houston Trial Lawyers Foundation, the charitable branch of the Houston Trial Lawyers Association ("HTLA"). The foundation adopted Kennedy Elementary at least ten years ago and has placed mentors in every classroom, Mallia said. Between 30 and 40 members of HTLA participate in the program, he said.

Mallia visits a sixth grade class in the school every Wednesday for about an hour. "What we do is build self-esteem," he said. "It's a fun, fun program."

Some students with whom he visits express an interest in becoming attorneys, but it's not because Mallia is recruiting them. "I'm not out there to make lawyers. That's not the point. I'm out there to try to show them that they have opportunities they never had thought of and to be brave enough to dream and follow those dreams."

Mallia said he became involved with the program in response to those who helped him when he was younger.

"I had people in my life that helped me so significantly, and when I went back and tried to thank them, they sort of looked at me with a blank stare, like, 'I did what?' It just started me thinking. When I started working with these kids, I had the same reaction. I'd meet their parents or guardians and they'd say what a positive influence I or some other had been in their lives," he said. "It's the best return I get on any investment I've ever had."

Although some of the students he once mentored are in high school now, he still keeps up with a number of them. "I'll get a call from some of them out of the blue sometimes," he said.

A past president of both HTLA and the Houston Trial Lawyers Foundation, Mallia graduated from South Texas College of Law and earned his bachelor's degree from Lamar College of Technology, now Lamar University, in Beaumont. He is a member of the board of Justice for Children, an organization for which he has handled cases on a volunteer basis for several years.