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Clerkship

Honorable Rebecca Pallmeyer of the Northern District of Illinois

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Before Edelson

I worked as a Skadden Fellow at Legal Aid Chicago

Curriculum Vitae

J. ELI WADE-SCOTT is Global Managing Partner at Edelson PC. Eli also leads the firm’s Class Action practice group and AI practice group. 

Eli has repeatedly been appointed class counsel in cases pressing novel questions of law, and has negotiated record-breaking settlements in privacy and technology cases. Eli has also been frequently appointed to represent states and cities to handle high-profile litigation, including by the District of Columbia against JUUL, Inc. in litigation arising from the youth vaping epidemic, by the State of New Mexico to prosecute Google’s violations of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, and as a Special Assistant State’s Attorney for Illinois and the District of Columbia in litigation against Facebook arising from the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

  • Successfully represented ACLU and other public interest organizations in a lawsuit against Clearview AI, resulting in a consent decree barring Clearview from offering its AI-powered facial recognition products to the private market nationwide, and banning it entirely from Illinois for five years. American Civil Liberties Union v. Clearview AI, Inc., No. 20 CH 4353 (Cir. Ct. Cook Cty.). The settlement has been called a “milestone for civil rights.”
  • Serves as Publishers’ Coordination Counsel, representing the interests of publishers in first-ever certified class action against Anthropic for industry-wide copyright infringement, alleging billions of dollars in damages. Bartz v. Anthropic PBC, Inc., No. 3:24-cv-05417 (N.D. Cal.).
  • Brought suit on behalf of California consumers against a self-proclaimed “robot lawyer” alleging the company fraudulently claimed to be using AI and provided unauthorized legal services. Company ceased use of “robot lawyer” language and stopped offering legal services. Faridian v. DoNotPay, Inc., 23-cv-01692 (N.D. Cal.).
  • Recognized as a Rising Star of the Plaintiffs Bar by The National Law Journal, 2022-2023.
  • Covered in the “They’ve Got Next” series, profiling Five Fresh Faces to Know in Privacy and Cybersecurity.
  • Recognized as an Illinois Rising Star by Super Lawyers, 2019-2022
  • Awarded an Equal Justice America Fellowship in 2012 and Vorenberg Equal Justice Summer Fellowship in 2013 to fund public interest positions.
  • Awarded a Skadden Fellowship by the Skadden Fellowship Foundation, 2014.
  • Panelist, “The Day After Tomorrow: What’s Next for U.S. Consumer Privacy?”,  IAPP Privacy. Security. Risk (October 13, 2022).
  • Panelist, “Big Data Consumer Class Actions: A Problem in Need of a Solution or a Solution in Need of a Problem?“, ABA Regional Symposium on Class Actions and Mass Torts (June 17, 2022).
  • Presenter, “The Remote Courtroom in the Time of COVID”, Illinois State Bar Association & Illinois Judges’ Association (December 11, 2020).
  • Presenter, “Standing, Statutory Violations, and “Intangible Harm””: The Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act and Beyond, Celesq (May 5, 2019).
  • Guest Lecturer in the Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law’s Clinic Practice: Civil Litigation Course, 2015 and 2016.

Before joining Edelson PC, Eli served as a law clerk to the Honorable Rebecca Pallmeyer of the Northern District of Illinois. Eli has also worked as a Skadden Fellow at Legal Aid Chicago, Cook County’s federally-funded legal aid provider. There, Eli represented low-income tenants in affirmative litigation against their landlords to remedy dangerous housing conditions.

Eli received his J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he was an Executive Editor on the Harvard Law and Policy Review and a research assistant to Professor Vicki C. Jackson.

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