Andrew S. Boutros has been a Lecturer in Law at the Law School since 2011, teaching a course on corporate criminal prosecutions and investigations. At different times, he has also served as a special advisor to the University of Chicago Corporate Lab. While working with the Law School for the last 15 years, Mr. Boutros has helped plan, organize, and host several conferences; worked with students to publish a special report on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (“FCPA”); worked with and advised students in the publication of their own works in journals and other outlets across the country; and published his own work with one of the Law School’s journals.

A former federal prosecutor in the Financial Crimes and Special Prosecutions Section of the Chicago U.S. Attorney’s Office, Mr. Boutros now is firmwide co-chair of Shook, Hardy & Bacon’s Government Investigations and White Collar Practice. He leads teams of attorneys in high-stakes trials, investigations, white collar matters, regulatory and securities enforcement disputes, and complex litigations. Mr. Boutros’s practice also extends to crisis management response, strategic counseling and compliance-related work.

Private Practice: Mr. Boutros draws on his government experience to represent companies large and small, public and private, as well as their boards, audit committees, officers, directors, and other individuals in their internal investigations and government enforcement matters. His client representations frequently require that he interface with the DOJ, USAO, FBI, SEC, IRS, and other federal and state agencies. In doing so, Mr. Boutros has obtained declinations of criminal charges for companies and individuals, secured reduced charges or civil instead of criminal charges for others, negotiated corporate pre-trial diversion agreements, successfully advocated for substantially reduced business and individual fines and penalties, and prevailed in obtaining several individual sentences of probation notwithstanding government calls for imprisonment. In addition, Mr. Boutros previously served as legal counsel to the independent compliance monitor for a series of pharmacy entities, pursuant to a U.S. Department of Labor administrative agreement.

Government Service: While in the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Mr. Boutros handled hundreds of matters, briefed and argued appeals to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, and tried or prepped dozens of cases for trial. Over the course of his public service career, Mr. Boutros first-chaired a number of high-profile cases of national and international significance, which the Chicago Sun-Times described in a profile of him as “some of the toughest, most sophisticated cases at the Dirksen Federal Courthouse.” Among his matters, Mr. Boutros (i) convicted the world’s largest online drug trafficker on the dark website “Silk Road,” and was a member of the government’s inter-agency, multidistrict Silk Road Task Force; (ii) convicted one of the country’s “Top 10 Most Wanted” mortgage fraud defendants; (iii) convicted Edgewater Medical Center’s owner and operator for crimes relating to more than $188 million in judgments; (iv) successfully prosecuted the most extensive international criminal trade, customs and antidumping fraud cases of their kind, which Bloomberg Businessweek described as “the largest food fraud in U.S. history;” and (v) negotiated two of the Northern District of Illinois’ earliest criminal corporate deferred prosecution agreements. As a federal prosecutor, Mr. Boutros coordinated efforts with international law enforcement authorities in more than 20 countries and charged and prosecuted crimes involving $500 million in losses, proceeds and judgments.

Extracurricular Activities: Mr. Boutros has been a member of the American Law Institute since 2015 and serves on ALI’s Regional Advisory Group for Region 7 (Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin). He is a Fellow in the International Academy of Financial Crime Litigators, which has an invite-only membership of 76 worldwide, with just 17 Fellows in the United States. As part of his thought leadership, Mr. Boutros has authored nearly 150 articles, thought pieces and book chapters. He also has published two books on white collar law: the first on compliance with the American Bar Association and the second with Oxford University Press on global anti-corruption. Mr. Boutros has chaired and organized various legal programs and presented at 85 domestic and international programs. His presentations have ranged from the FCPA, international corruption, white collar criminal defense, government enforcement, customs and antidumping duty fraud to international and trade fraud, food fraud, supply chain integrity, corporate social responsibility, human trafficking and other related topics. As part of his scholarship, Mr. Boutros coined the term “carbon copy” prosecution in an article that appeared in the University of Chicago Legal Forum. His work described a global enforcement practice that the Department of Justice subsequently recognized in its “pile on” enforcement policy.

Mr. Boutros’s law firm profile is available here.