Stephen Andrew Best

Stephen Andrew Best

Title: Partner, Chair of the White Collar Defense, Investigations & Compliance Practice
Company: Brown Rudnick LLP
Location: Washington, D.C., United States

Stephen Andrew Best, Partner and Chair of the White Collar Defense, Investigations & Compliance Practice at Brown Rudnick LLP, has been recognized by Marquis Who’s Who Top Lawyers for dedication, achievements, and leadership in law.

First earning a Bachelor of Arts from Washington and Lee University in 1986, Mr. Best went on to obtain a Doctor of Jurisprudence from the University of Texas at Austin and was subsequently licensed to practice law by the District of Columbia Bar and the Virginia State Bar. He embarked on his career as a judicial clerk in the senior judge’s division of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, before going on to serve as an assistant Commonwealth’s attorney for Fairfax County, Virginia, and an assistant United States attorney in Washington, D.C. Mr. Best attributes much of his success to this early experience as a state and federal prosecutor, along with his innate drive to persevere and the fact that he cares deeply about each and every one of his clients, treating them as if they were his own family.

With a great love of being a trial lawyer and helping his clients to maneuver through the legal process, prior to joining Brown Rudnick, Mr. Best served as the Co-Chair of the White Collar Defense group at a large, multinational law firm based in New York. In 2013, he became a partner with Brown Rudnick LLP, where he serves as Chair of the White Collar Defense, Investigations & Compliance Practice. His diverse practice focuses on representing clients in government investigations and enforcement proceedings, FCPA/ anti-corruption compliance and defense, corporate governance, crisis management and audit committee investigations. Steve is a skilled litigator and represents clients in both criminal and civil trials and has been lead chair on approximately two hundred jury trials and hundreds of bench trials. Over his extensive career, Steve has represented audit committees and independent special committees investigating whistleblower allegations of fraud and other corporate wrongdoing. He has a deep knowledge of complex accounting and SEC reporting issues, and anti-corruption compliance, with particular focus on government enforcement and regulatory matters, ethics, and compliance.

Alongside his primary responsibilities, Mr. Best is a regular lecturer on criminal law and procedure for bar associations and state and federal law enforcement agencies. He has also spent time as an instructor at the Trial Advocacy Institute of the School of Law at the University of Virginia and an adjunct professor of trial advocacy law at George Washington University. He has also been affiliated with the American Bar Association, where he sits as the committee chair for the section on litigation; the Equity, Inclusion and Diversity Council; and the Fairfax County Bar Association. Furthermore, he has been recognized with a myriad of accolades over the course of his career, beginning with being named Top Lawyer in Washington, D.C., by Washingtonian magazine in 2007. In 2010, he was honored among the Top 500 Lawyers in America by Lawdragon, Inc. and in 2015, he was named a White Collar Crime Trailblazer by the National Law Journal. Recognized as an expert in business crime defense by Who’s Who Legal in 2015, he received the accolade again from 2019 to 2020.

Featured among America’s Top 100 Criminal Defense Attorneys in 2018, Mr. Best has been listed among the Top Rated White Collar Crime & Government Investigations Lawyers by Chambers and Partners and the Best Lawyers in America in Criminal Defense: White-Collar by Best Lawyers since 2012. He has also been regularly honored by Super Lawyers as a Top Rated White Collar Crimes Attorney in Washington, D.C., in Criminal Defense: White-Collar, and in Securities Litigation — first in 2008 and ongoing since 2013, and by in its most recent edition of Lexology Client Choice and Global Expert Guides. Above all these accolades, however, Mr. Best considers the highlight of his career to be successfully representing his good friend, Mark Cuban, against the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s highly publicized allegations of insider trading.

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Lifetime Achievement Award

Lifetime Achievement

Brown Rudnick LLP

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