Sarah L. Cylkowski

Sarah L. Cylkowski litigates complex matters in state and federal courts, with a particular focus on commercial health care disputes, class actions, e-discovery and antitrust cases. Her clients include insurance companies, banks, automotive manufacturers and various other corporate commercial litigants.  

Ms. Cylkowski has developed extensive experience counseling clients through large-scale discovery, including multidistrict litigation discovery. She helps her clients navigate the preservation, collection and production of significant volumes of data while minimizing disruptions to their day-to-day business operations. In this role, Ms. Cylkowski works efficiently with her clients’ employees, experts, co-counsel and opposing counsel to streamline discovery and avoid unnecessary costs. Most recently, she counseled a client through discovery in a large, multidistrict litigation that required the coordination of discovery strategy with 37 co-defendants, the collection of millions of documents spanning multiple decades, and the supervision of a large-scale document review project.

Ms. Cylkowski dedicates her spare time to causes that impact and benefit young people. Since 2012, she has been a significant contributor to the Bodman team handling three juvenile lifer cases, which seek resentencing for Michigan inmates who had been sentenced to mandatory life without parole for crimes committed as juveniles. Her efforts to seek justice for prisoners sentenced under now-outmoded guidelines were recognized by the Detroit Bar Association, who awarded her the Barristers Pro Bono Award in 2017. Ms. Cylkowski and her husband also co-founded TechRead, a charitable organization that partners with community programs to identify a reading need, then raises money to buy technology, such as e-readers, to give students access to a wider range of reading materials.

In law school, Ms. Cylkowski served as Executive Editor of the University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform and as a teaching assistant in the legal writing program.  She also worked as a student attorney for the University of Michigan Child Advocacy Law Clinic and was a Bergstrom Child Welfare Law Fellow.

Honors, Awards, and Recognition

• The Best Lawyers in America: Ones to Watch 2021, Commercial Litigation, Insurance Law
• Fellow, Detroit Bar Association, 2019
• Benchmark Litigation 2018-2020 "40 & Under Hot List"
• Michigan Rising Stars 2018-2020, Business Litigation
• DBusiness Magazine "Top Lawyers" 2020, Litigation-Insurance
• Barristers Pro Bono Award, Detroit Bar Association, 2017
• Michigan "Most Valuable Millennial," Corp! Magazine, 2015

Civic, Cultural, and Community Activities

• TechRead, Board of Directors, 2014-present
• Detroit Bar Association Foundation, Member, Board of Trustees, 2019-present

Professional Affiliations

• Federal Bar Association
  • Eastern District of Michigan Chapter
  • Newsletter Committee, Advertising Co-Chair, 2014-2017
• Defense Research Institute
  • Class Action Steering Committee, Member, 2015-2016
• Detroit Bar Association, Member
• Oakland County Bar Association, Member
• Inforum, Member

Related News

• 09/18/202056 Bodman Attorneys Listed in Michigan Super Lawyers 2020
• 08/24/2020Eight Bodman PLC Attorneys Listed In 2021 Best Lawyers: Ones to Watch
• 07/31/2020Four Bodman Attorneys Named to Benchmark Litigation 40 & Under Hot List
• 11/26/2019Bodman Attorneys Sarah L. Cylkowski and Katelyn M. Young Honored by Detroit Bar Association
• 11/01/201970 Bodman Attorneys Included in DBusiness Top Lawyers 2020