Stevenson Bernard Professor, George Washington University Law School
The Honorable F. Scott Kieff is the Stevenson Bernard Professor at George Washington University Law School and a Visiting Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.
He served as Commissioner of the U.S. International Trade Commission from 2013-2017. He also served during the Bush, Obama, and Trump Administrations in the part-time leadership of the national security defense-intelligence community.
He was previously a professor of law and medicine at Washington University in Saint Louis and a Senior Fellow at Hoover. A former law clerk to U.S. Circuit Judge Giles S. Rich, he is a graduate of Penn Law School and MIT, where he studied molecular biology and microeconomics. He was elected to the European Academy of Sciences and Arts in 2012 and the Academia Europaea in 2024.
His private sector work through Kieff Strategies LLC (www.kieffstrategies.com) provides neutral services including mediation and compliance, and expert services including crisis management, advising, and testimony.
Partner, Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough LLP
Erika C. Birg is a partner based out of the Atlanta office of Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough LLP. She focuses her practice on helping companies protect their businesses before, during, and after litigation, with experience in resolving business-to-business disputes through litigation, alternative dispute resolution, and state and federal appeals involving business torts, contract disputes, trade secrets, misappropriation, computer fraud, and non-compete matters.
Partner and Co-Chair, Public Policy Group, Shook Hardy & Bacon LLP
Mark Behrens co-chairs Shook's Washington, DC-based Public Policy Practice Group and is a leading national expert on civil justice issues with over thirty years of experience. A substantial part of his practice is working to improve the civil litigation environment through state and federal legislation; in the courts through amicus curiae briefs; through legal scholarship and judicial education; and in the court of public opinion.
Mark is actively involved in civil justice reform efforts at the federal and state levels. He has testified before the U.S. Congress and most state legislatures on behalf of business and civil justice organizations. Mark also has an active amicus brief practice specializing in tort liability and civil justice issues. He has authored or co-authored over 150 amicus briefs in cases before the United States Supreme Court and federal and state appellate courts on behalf of business, civil justice, and defense lawyer organizations. In addition, Mark routinely files comments on behalf of business, civil justice, and defense lawyer organizations regarding potential changes to federal and state court rules. He chairs the International Association of Defense Counsel’s (IADC) Civil Justice Response Committee and serves on the Board of Directors of Lawyers for Civil Justice (LCJ).
Mark is a member of the American Law Institute (ALI). He received his J.D. in 1990 from Vanderbilt University Law School, where he was a member of the Vanderbilt Law Review. He received his B.A. in economics from the University of Wisconsin in 1987.
Robert S. Stevens Professor of Law, Emeritus, Cornell Law School
Partner, Proskauer Rose LLP
Steven Krane joined Proskauer upon his graduation from New York University School of Law in 1981, taking a year off in 1984-85 to serve as law clerk to Judge Judith S. Kaye of the New York Court of Appeals. He became a partner in the Litigation and Dispute Resolution Department in 1989, and is the chair of the firm’s Law Firm Advisory Practice Group, concentrating in the field of legal ethics and professional responsibility, while continuing to represent commercial clients in a broad range of civil litigation matters.
Steven represents law firms and individual lawyers in a variety of professional matters, including rendering opinions and counseling them on a daily basis on a broad range of professional matters including conflicts of interest, client confidentiality, cross-border legal practice issues, partnership disputes, and internal investigations. In addition, he defends law firms in litigated proceedings involving legal malpractice and other civil claims; represents individual lawyers before grievance and disciplinary committees; and assists lawyers in disputes concerning admission to the Bar. He has served as a litigation consultant and expert witness testifying on a variety of issues such as conflicts of interest, litigation conduct, legal malpractice, billing disputes, and solicitation of clients by lawyers leaving a law firm.
Steven is among the nation’s leaders in developing and interpreting the rules governing the professional conduct of lawyers. He is chair of the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility, and has served on that committee since 2004. He has led the New York State Bar Association's Committee on Standards of Attorney Conduct, and its predecessor, since 1995. That committee is responsible for formulating the ethical rules governing New York lawyers. He served as a member of the NYSBA Committee on Professional Ethics for four years (1990-94), and spent nine of the 11 years from 1985 to 1996 associated in various capacities with the Committee on Professional and Judicial Ethics of the New York City Bar, including three years as the chair (1993-96). He was recently appointed by Chief Judge Kaye as co-chair of the New York Judicial Institute on Professionalism in the Law. He served as vice-chair of the NYSBA Special Committee on the Law Governing Firm Structure and peration (the “MacCrate Committee”), and chaired the successor to that committee, the Special Committee on Multidisciplinary Practice.
Steven has had a distinguished career as a bar leader outside of the field of legal ethics as well, most notably serving as President of the NYSBA in 2001-02; the youngest person to hold that post. He coordinated the efforts of the organized bar in responding to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001; initiated the NYSBA’s successful lawsuit against the Federal Trade Commission challenging the application of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act’s privacy provisions to the legal profession (serving as counsel to the NYSBA in the District of Columbia Circuit and as a member of the ABA’s Gramm-Leach-Bliley Task Force); and created and now chairs the Student Loan Assistance for the Public Interest program, which provides grants to lawyers in public interest jobs to help them defray their educational debts. Active in the community, he is a member of the Board of Directors of the Friends of the John Jay Homestead (Katonah, NY) and a Trustee of the New York Bar Foundation.
Steven is active in the development of law and policy relating to cross-border legal practice, and serves as one of the principal negotiators for the ABA and NYSBA in their efforts to achieve agreements with foreign governments to liberalize restrictions on lawyers engaged in international practice. In that regard, he chairs the NYSBA Special Committee on Crossborder Legal Practice; is a vice-chair of the NYSBA Section on International Law and Practice; and Liaison to International Bar Associations; and is an Advisor to the ABA Task Force on International Trade in Legal Services.
Steven served as a Hearing Panel Chair for both the Departmental Disciplinary Committee for the First Judicial Department (1996-99) and the Committee on Grievances of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (1995-2000). He currently serves as a Special Referee for the Grievance Committee for the Ninth Judicial District (Second Department) in New York.
For several years, Steven taught legal ethics at Columbia University School of Law as a member of its adjunct faculty. He continues to be a frequent lecturer on ethics, and has written extensively on issues of professional responsibility.
A Reemergence of Regulation at the Interface Between Patents and Antitrust
Gerald J. Mossinghoff, F. Scott Kieff
Engage Volume 4, Issue 1, May 2003
At the end of 2001, the Federal Trade Commission and the Antitrust Division of the...
Waffling Circuits: Workplace ADR After Circuit City and Waffle House
Francis T. Coleman
From a legal standpoint, alternate dispute resolution (“ADR”) agreements in the workplace have exhilarated HR...
Working Hard or Hardly Working?
David G. Evans
California is a worker’s paradise when it comes to taking time off from work. The...
Waging War Against Binding Arbitration: Will Trial Lawyers Win The Battle
Erika C. Birg
We all likely consume goods or services subject to standard contracts with vendors, contracts that...
Preserving the Right to a Representative Jury
Mark A. Behrens
For over two centuries, the jury system has played an important and revered role in...
"Fast Food": The Next Tobacco?
Dwight J. Davis, Jamie Schwartz, Ann Driscoll
In the Summer of 2002, three lawsuits were filed against Quick Service Restaurants (“QSRs”) alleging...
Engage Volume 4, Issue 1, May 2003
ADMINISTRATIVE LAW & REGULATION The Presidential Appointment Process at the Beginning of the 21st Century...
Why Central Bank Should be Overruled
Roger C. Cramton
The lawyer’s primary function is to counsel and assist clients in conduct that is “within...
It's Not Our Job
Steven C. Krane
Lawyers have traditionally been able to provide their clients with dispassionate legal advice based on...
The ABA's Attack on "Unauthorized" Practice of Law and Consumer Choice
George W.C McCarter
Judge Posner is not alone in observing that the legal profession is “a cartel of...