About Mr. Shapiro

Introduction:

Scott E. Shapiro is a successful business litigator and trial attorney.  Mr. Shapiro is also a neutral, focusing on his service as an arbitrator while occasionally handling mediations.  

Mr. Shapiro has been on the Employment Law Panel, as an Arbitrator, for the American Arbitration Association since 2022, and regularly handles arbitration cases as an arbitrator.  

He selectively continues to handle high-value litigation and trial employment law matters for employees and employers, while continuing to build a full time arbitration and mediation practice. 

Mr. Shapiro has handled, and continues to handle, multi-million dollar jury trials in state and federal courts.  Because he is an active arbitrator in the employment law area, Mr. Shapiro makes it a point to balance his practice into nearly equal numbers of plaintiff and defense cases, and is highly selective in the matters he takes on as an advocate.  As Mr. Shapiro no longer utilizes litigation staff, he typically works as Of Counsel on matters with other firms when taking on litigation.

Mr. Shapiro's Education, Litigation, Trial, and Appellate Experience: 

Mr. Shapiro is admitted to practice law in all California State and in Federal Courts.  Mr. Shapiro has represented the prevailing parties in several seven figure actions, jury trials, class actions, and appeals, including in actions defended by highly regarded Los Angeles and National litigation firms.

He received a B. A. in Liberal Studies in 1993 from the University of California at Riverside, with an emphasis in Administrative Studies and American History.  He thereafter obtained his J.D. from Southwestern University School of Law in 1997.  Mr. Shapiro has practiced as a litigation attorney in Los Angeles since 1998, and has been heavily engaged as a trial attorney, complex business litigator, complex collections attorney, and employment law attorney.  

Prior to graduating law school, Mr. Shapiro participated in a summer clerkship in Department 66 of the Los Angeles Superior Court, which at that time handled all Writs of Attachment and Possessions at the Central District Courthouse (thereafter named the Stanley Mosk Courthouse) of the County of Los Angeles, experience he found very useful in his career handling advanced collection matters while continuing to hone his evidentiary marshalling and presentation skills.  Mr. Shapiro obtained, and successfully defensed, many dozens of Writs of Attachments and Writs of Possessions in his career.  

Prior to graduating law school and passing the California Bar Exam, having taken a trial advocacy class at Southwestern and thereafter becoming certified, Mr. Shapiro also participated in a volunteer externship with the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office.  During that externship with the DA’s Office, Mr. Shapiro obtained a jury trial criminal conviction for the People of the State of California, in the only trial he handled for the DA’s Office under supervision of a Deputy District Attorney.  Mr. Shapiro was the first chair in that criminal trial. 

For several years, Mr. Shapiro worked for Aaronson & Aaronson in Encino, California, handling contract, fraud, construction, and intellectual property actions.  In 1999, he established his own practice, focusing on complex business litigation, trial work, and class actions. 

Mr. Shapiro's experience trying a case prior to graduating law school, and his completion of an excellent trial advocacy course, gave him the experience and tools necessary to successfully handle a seven-figure civil jury trial, as the first chair, against a large publicly traded company represented by a premier Los Angeles litigation and trial firm, within three years of graduating law school.  Mr. Shapiro successfully handled the appeal along with his co-counsel, fully obtaining the benefits of the Jury's award after an appellate motion for reconsideration was granted. 

He thereafter continued his heavy litigation and trial practice until early 2009, when after nearly a decade of that intense work in his own firm, he closed that practice and became General Counsel for a factoring company, engaged in trade financing including factoring of receivables. For three years, the General Counsel position afforded him significant and priceless time with his family, including two very young children.

While continuing to handle select litigation matters for his own practice, Mr. Shapiro also worked for three years as General Counsel for a factoring and trade finance company, 1st PMF Bancorp, and regularly handled factoring (purchase and financing of accounts receivable) transactions and other trade finance transactions (purchase order financing, letters of credit, etc.). Additionally, his clients, including that factoring company, prevailed in hundreds of collection lawsuits and lending disputes.  

In his career, Mr. Shapiro successfully handled class actions while working with attorney Barry M. Appell and other outstanding co-counsel, including seven figure wage and hour class actions.  Mr. Shapiro worked with Mr. Appell, as a founding partner of Appell Shapiro, LLP formed around 2012 and actively operated that firm with Mr. Appell until August 1, 2021, when they decided to pursue Alternative Dispute Resolution careers.  Mr. Appell is now a full time busy Mediator (https://appellmediation.com/), with the continued admiration of his former partner.  

Scott E. Shapiro's Arbitration Style and Goals as an Arbitrator:

Mr. Shapiro's goal is to provide Parties a forum that delivers them the opportunity to obtain the information necessary to fairly and fully present their case and defenses, without the unnecessary expenditure of resources, time, and money associated with waiting to have issues and matters decided in California's overburdened courts.  Thus, Mr. Shapiro's arbitration style is typically formal as one could expect in Court, while placing an emphasis on maximizing the main benefits of arbitration: expediency, efficiency, and flexibility.  

As a litigant, he appreciated that arbitrators emphasized efficiency and expediency of arbitration, if and when they consistently considered all facts, followed the law, and issued all remedies available to the Parties as if they were in Court, whether such determinations were in favor of the claimants or the respondents.  Mr. Shapiro's goal as an arbitrator is to give the Parties a similar, consistent forum wherein they can expect that from him as an arbitrator.