Scott is a partner and chair of the Litigation Practice Group, leader of the Hedge Fund & Investment Management Group, and a member of the Securities & Commodities Litigation Group. He concentrates his practice on complex civil litigation and arbitration; regulatory investigations, audits and enforcement proceedings; internal investigations; and employment disputes in the securities and financial services industries, with a particular emphasis on hedge funds, investment advisers, and broker-dealers. Scott has successfully litigated a number of high-profile cases, including matters related to WorldCom, Bernard Ebbers, and Jack Grubman, and he is currently involved in significant sub-prime mortgage litigation on behalf of several national and international hedge funds.
Scott's victories include complete defense verdicts in a $900-million securities arbitration involving WorldCom and a $450-million securities arbitration involving Metromedia Fiber Networks. He has also represented a number of public and private companies, senior corporate executives, investment advisers, and hedge funds in a variety of securities fraud matters, including direct liability cases, derivative actions, and class actions involving insider trading, accounting fraud, earnings management, and market timing. Representative clients include major national, international, regional, and local broker-dealers; investment banks; hedge funds; investment advisers; Fortune 100, 250, and 500 companies; private oil and gas companies; as well as individual officers, directors, and key employees of these institutions.
Scott has successfully represented clients throughout the country in federal and state jury trials, bench trials, AAA arbitrations, NASD arbitrations, NYSE arbitrations, FINRA arbitrations, and mediations, including cases in Arkansas, California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New York, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Oregon, Utah, and Wisconsin. In addition, Scott has successfully defended clients in investigations and regulatory proceedings involving the SEC, the Department of Justice, the New York Attorney General, the NYSE, the NASD, as well as various state securities regulators.
Before completing law school, Scott worked in the securities industry as a consultant and hedge fund manager. While at Georgetown University Law Center in 1991, he was Managing Editor of the American Criminal Law Review, focusing on insider trading and other "white collar" criminal issues, and received a John M. Olin Law and Economics Fellowship. He worked with now-former SEC Chairman Harvey Pitt at Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson in Washington D.C. He later was associated with Cravath, Swaine & Moore in New York, and Kirkland & Ellis in Chicago.
Scott is a frequent speaker on securities and hedge fund topics and is sought after for his opinions by the financial media, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Financial Times, Forbes, Barron's, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, U.S. News and World Report, BusinessWeek, and the Washington Post.