John F. Savarese has been a partner in the Litigation Department of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz for more than 30 years. He has represented a wide array of Fortune 500 corporations, major financial institutions and senior executives in SEC and other regulatory enforcement proceedings, as well as white-collar criminal investigations, complex securities litigation, and internal investigations. His extensive experience includes major investigations concerning securities disclosure, accounting fraud, insider trading, environmental regulation, government contracts, criminal tax and criminal antitrust.
Mr. Savarese joined Wachtell Lipton after working in the United States Attorneys’ Office for the Southern District of New York, where he tried numerous jury trials, received the Attorney General’s John Marshall Award for Outstanding Legal Achievement, and also served as Chief Appellate Attorney. Prior to his work with the United States Attorneys’ Office, Mr. Savarese served as a law clerk to Justice William J. Brennan of the United States Supreme Court, and to the Honorable Louis H. Pollak of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
Mr. Savarese is regularly recognized as one of the world’s top litigators, including being selected in International Who’s Who of Business Lawyers, Chambers USA Guide and Lawdragon’s 500 Leading Lawyers in America. He has taught for many years a white-collar criminal law and procedure course at Harvard Law School and was the first chairman of the New York City Bar Association’s White Collar Criminal Law Committee. He is a member of the American Law Institute, serves as an advisor to the ALI’s project on Principles of Law, Compliance, Enforcement, and Risk Management and also to NYU Law School’s Program on Corporate Compliance and Enforcement.
Mr. Savarese also formerly served as chair of the board of trustees of the Vera Institute of Justice and of the board of trustees of The Brearley School in New York, and he now serves on the advisory boards at Harvard Law School, Equal Justice Works, Vera Action, the Nature Conservancy, and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.
Mr. Savarese graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University in 1977 and received his JD cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1981, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review.
Updated Oct 2024
