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Mark Harris is a Partner and co-head of the Appellate Practice Group, which was honored in 2011 by Law360 as one of five Appellate Practices of the Year in the U.S., and by the National Law Journal with a spot on its annual "Appellate Hot List." Mark is also a member of the Corporate Defense & Investigations and Securities Litigation Groups, concentrating his practice in the areas of white collar criminal defense and related litigation, and representing both institutional and individual clients in government investigations and prosecutions.

Mark is a former clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justices John Paul Stevens and Lewis Powell, Jr., and Judge Joel Flaum of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. Mark subsequently served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, during which he prosecuted a broad spectrum of federal crimes, including health care fraud, financial fraud, and corporate embezzlement, and tried a number of jury trials and argued before the Second Circuit.

Mark has handled dozens of cases in the U.S. Supreme Court and other appellate courts in a variety of areas spanning criminal law, sentencing, copyright, labor relations, administrative law, and personal injury, including:

  • Serving as co-counsel to petitioner in Hill v. United States, in which the Supreme Court applied the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 to benefit defendants retroactively

  • Obtaining reversal of the conviction of former Gen Re executive by the Second Circuit

  • Briefing and arguing the American Bar Association's successful challenge to the Federal Trade Commission's "Red Flags Rule," which sought to impose burdensome regulations on the legal profession, before the D.C. Circuit
  • Successfully representing electronic publishers before the U.S. Supreme Court in Reed Elsevier Inc. v. Muchnick, which Managing Intellectual Property Magazine named the 2010 "U.S. Copyright Case of the Year"
  • Persuading the Supreme Court in Hunter v. United States to vacate the Eleventh Circuit’s decision barring a habeas petitioner from challenging his erroneous sentence on appeal
  • Successfully representing an employer before the U.S. Supreme Court in 14 Penn Plaza LLC v. Pyett, which overturned 35 years of precedents concerning the enforceability of arbitration clauses in labor agreements

Mark has handled numerous matters involving securities fraud, tax evasion, insurance fraud, and a variety of financial crimes. Significant representations have included the following:

  • John and Timothy Rigas, principals of Adelphia Communications Corp., at their resentencing and before the Second Circuit
  • The president of a major international company whom federal authorities sought to extradite for tax offenses allegedly committed in the United States
  • The former CEO of Princeton Economics International, whose release Mark helped win from the longest term of federal civil contempt in U.S. history
  • An investor charged with securities fraud involving the conversion of a mutual savings bank to a capital stock bank

Since 1996, Mark has been a member of the Board of Editors of the Federal Sentencing Reporter and a frequent contributor. His work on behalf of non-U.S. clients was featured in the American Lawyer's 2006 Litigation supplement. He has lectured on both criminal law and appellate practice before the International Bar Association, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, PLI, and the ABA Sections of Litigation, Criminal Law, and Employment and Labor Law, and has been interviewed by Bloomberg Radio, the National Law Journal, WINS AM-1010, Law360, Legal Times, and other news organizations.

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