Scott Blake Harris
Scott Blake Harris is the Chairman of Harris, Wiltshire & Grannis LLP. He has practiced law in Washington D.C. for thirty-eight years, and has had extensive communications, technology, energy, administrative, litigation, trade, and national security law experience.
Mr. Harris re-joined the firm in May 2014, having left in 2009 to serve as General Counsel of the United States Department of Energy. At Energy, Mr. Harris began the first systematic effort to enforce the Department’s energy efficiency regulations and created its enforcement office. He also changed the rulemaking process to allow more public access and greater transparency, and played a key role in the Department’s efforts to tackle the legal and policy issues raised by the implementation of smart grid technologies. While at Energy, Mr. Harris served as Co-Chair of the Broadband Subcommittee of the White House National Science and Technology Council. Mr. Harris previously served in government as the first Chief of the International Bureau at the Federal Communications Commission, as Chief Counsel for Export Administration at the U.S. Department of Commerce, and as a law clerk to the Honorable Gerhard A. Gesell on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
In the private sector, Mr. Harris served as the Managing Partner of Harris, Wiltshire & Grannis from the founding of the firm in 1998 until his departure for DOE in 2009. Since 2009, he has also served as Senior Vice President and General Counsel of Neustar, Inc., and as Co-Managing Partner of Wilkinson Barker Knauer LLP. Earlier in his career he was Chair of the communications practice at Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, and a partner at Williams & Connolly, where began his career in private practice as a litigator.
Mr. Harris has long been active in the legal and policy communities. He recently served as Chair of the FCC Advisory Committee for the 2015 World Radio Conference (WRC), and is a member of the State Department’s Advisory Committee on International Communications, and a member of the Department of Energy’s Appliance Standards and Rulemaking Advisory Committee.
Mr. Harris has received many honors during his career. He was honored as a “Visionary,” and before that was named as one of the Top Ten Communications Lawyers, by the Legal Times. He has received awards for Distinguished Service from the Federal Communications Bar Association, for Outstanding Service from the National Association of State Energy Officials, and for Special Achievement from the Chairman of the FCC. He has also received the Marconi-Bell Award from the National Association of Radio and Telecommunications Engineers.