Experience 

As co-chair of the firm’s White Collar Criminal Defense and Compliance Practice group, Z Scott represents corporations in commercial and criminal litigation. She concentrates her practice on complex commercial litigation, corporate internal investigations including matters related to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, counseling on corporate compliance matters and white collar criminal defense. She is a seasoned trial lawyer who has tried over 40 mostly jury trials to verdict in federal court. Her federal civil and criminal litigation experience includes accounting and commercial fraud, public corruption,  civil tax appeals and criminal tax prosecutions, money-laundering and investment and financial institution fraud. She has also led and represented companies in complex and extensive  government regulatory and criminal grand jury investigations.

Prior to joining Mayer Brown, Z served as Executive Inspector General for the Office of the Illinois Governor (2003-2005), where she established and managed an internal compliance and investigative agency for Illinois government and Illinois public universities.  Her experience included participation and oversight of over 200 internal investigations of state vendors and state employees, as well as counseling members of the Governor’s cabinet and state senior managers, including agency directors, on issues related to personnel policies, internal controls, ethics and systemic personnel problems. Z also worked closely with the state’s internal auditor and the Illinois Auditor General in matters related to integrity of state government functions.

Prior to her work in Illinois government, Z served as a federal criminal prosecutor with the United States Attorney’s Office (1987-2003), where she held various management positions including Chief of the General Crimes Section. As Chief, she was responsible for the supervision of Section Deputies and Line Assistant US Attorneys, and she reviewed and approved hundreds of federal prosecutions and participated in strategy sessions related to federal indictments and federal criminal trials. Before joining the US Attorney’s Office, Z served in the Office of the Corporation Counsel for the City of Chicago (1983-1987).

Z served as an adjunct instructor in trial advocacy for 13 years at Northwestern University School of Law (1993-2005), where she led a team of five adjunct professors and was awarded the recognition of Outstanding Adjunct Professor in Trial Advocacy in 1999. She also taught trial advocacy at The John Marshall School of Law (2002-2004), and she co-taught classes at the University of Chicago Law School on criminal sentencing and federal criminal law (2001, 2003). According to Legal 500 US, Z has an “impeccable reputation among clients” and most recently, was named to Illinois SuperLawyers (2009).  She is a frequent lecturer on issues related to federal criminal law, electronic discovery, ethics and compliance policies and  trial advocacy.

Notable Engagements 

• Represented Siemens Medical Solutions in a multi-defendant federal prosecution in which the company was charged with fraud in connection with representations made to Cook County regarding compliance with minority business enterprise requirements (United States v. Siemens Medical Solutions, et al.).
• Served on the legal team representing Ernst & Young in a professional malpractice case, (Alabama Hospital Ass'n. v. General Reinsurance, et al., CV 2004-1172 P).
• Represented a major health care company in an Illinois Attorney General False Claims Act investigation.
• Designed an FCPA compliance program for a global public company.
• Served as lead prosecutor in a case involving public corruption and criminal tax violations; defendant pleaded guilty (United States v. Sarallo, US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois).
• Served as lead prosecutor in a public corruption case involving embezzlement and criminal tax violations by two members of a suburban police pension board; the defendants pleaded guilty (United States v. Jackson and Johnson, US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois).
• Served as lead prosecutor in a multi-million dollar investment fraud case; the defendant pleaded guilty (United States v. Anderson, US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois).

Education 

Indiana University School of Law - Bloomington, JD, 1983 • University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, BS, Journalism, 1980

Admitted

• US Supreme Court, 2009
• Federal Court of Claims, 2009
• Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, 1987
• Federal Trial Bar, 1986
• Northern District of Illinois, 1983
• Illinois, 1983