Scott Edelman > Milbank > New York, United States > Lawyer Profile

Scott Edelman

Position

Chairman of Milbank LLP and Partner

Career

Recognized as one of the country’s top litigators and corporate advisers, he specializes in high-stakes, bet-the-company litigation and trials across several substantive areas of the law, including securities, commercial and white collar.

While serving as Chairman of Milbank, Mr. Edelman maintains a busy and active litigation practice, which includes trials, appeals, white collar and regulatory matters, and corporate governance issues.

Over the course of his career, Mr. Edelman has taken more than 18 cases to trial and argued dozens of appeals, accumulating a slew of honors along the way. He has tried dozens of civil and criminal cases representing numerous corporations and individuals.

In 2017, Mr. Edelman was inducted as a fellow into The American College of Trial Lawyers (ACTL). Mr. Edelman has successfully led trial teams in a string of high-profile victories. In 2016, he secured a significant victory against the DOJ on behalf of Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI) on music licensing affecting the more than $2 billion music performing industry which garnered him recognition by The American Lawyer as “Litigator of the Week.” He also prevailed on behalf of BMI in a trial victory against Pandora in 2015 in the historic music licensing rate case that set the new market rate for all digital music services and awarded BMI a significant fee increase of revenue from Pandora. On behalf of Citi Global Markets in 2014, he secured an injunction preventing an arbitration under FINRA in a high-profile case brought by a Saudi investor. Mr. Edelman also won a major trial victory for Cerberus Capital Management related to the multi-billion dollar merger with United Rentals in the first M&A litigation arising out of the troubled credit markets to proceed to trial in Delaware in 2007.

Highly regarded for his extensive legal skills in and out of the courtroom, clients describe Mr. Edelman as “a phenomenal attorney whose courtroom style is nothing short of perfection” (Chambers). As one of the most versatile litigators in the country, Mr. Edelman is the only attorney in New York who is ranked by Chambers as a leading lawyer in each of the following areas: Securities Litigation, General Commercial Litigation, Media & Entertainment Litigation and White Collar Crime and Government Investigations. In 2023, Mr. Edelman was recognized by Billboard as a Top Music Lawyer.

Education

Mr. Edelman received his law degree from Harvard Law School, where he was a member of the Harvard Law Review and a John Olin Fellow in Law and Economics and received his B.A. (summa cum laude) and M.A. degrees, both in Economics, from Yale University.