Scott S. Partridge

Scott Partridge received his J.D. and LL.M. degrees from Tulane Law School and began his legal career at Lemle Kelleher in New Orleans where he was elected the youngest member of the Firm ever to serve on both the Management and Executive Committees. After fifteen years in private practice at this large law firm, Scott formed his own boutique litigation firm in 1995 with twenty-three lawyers. In the first ten years his law firm grew to seventy-five attorneys, involved almost exclusively in complex, high-risk civil litigation. While serving as the Managing Partner of Frilot Partridge, Scott built a national practice representing a diverse set of US and international clients, as both plaintiffs and defendants, in a wide array of matters, including class actions, mass torts, as well as commercial and maritime disputes.

In 2006, Scott accepted the role of Chief Deputy General Counsel of Monsanto Company and assumed responsibility for a variety of high-profile litigations, class actions, mass torts, commercial disputes, as well as investigations and litigations involving federal and state governments. With an intense high-profile litigation docket, Scott created new processes to resolve disputes while also maintaining a principled approach to advancing cases to trial. 

To increase the company’s focus on the management of disputes, Scott moved from the Law Team into a business leadership role as Vice President of Global Strategy. His responsibilities expanded as he designed and led a diverse Strategy Team aimed at evaluating risk and resolving complex disputes. This new Team included experts in finance, law, operations, communications, science, and government relations. Leading this Strategy Team with a focus on dispute resolution, Scott ended decades of class action and mass tort litigation involving Monsanto’s legacy manufacturing sites in West Virginia, Illinois, and Alabama, and resolved product liability class actions and business disputes. 

Recognizing the value wasted by an industry plagued with costly litigation among competitors, Scott designed and launched Monsanto’s unique relationship-based dispute resolution and conflict-avoidance model. With an innovative forward-looking focus, he created policies, established programs, and negotiated long-term agreements with competitors which led to the resolution of all disputes with those companies and successfully prevented new litigation. These sustainable programs put business people and scientists at the lead of strategic relationships responsible for identifying potential conflicts and exploring opportunities to work together on future business ventures and new research collaborations. In recognition of developing these transformative programs, the International Institute for Conflict Prevention & Resolution (CPR) honored Scott in 2016 with CPR’s inaugural Inspiring Innovation Award. 

As the agriculture industry began to consolidate, Scott was at the forefront of negotiating and concluding the merger between Monsanto and its new parent Bayer. For over twenty months, he helped conclude the merger, with final approval by all global competition regulators. Following the combination of the two companies, recognizing Scott’s unique value, Bayer asked him to serve as General Counsel of Bayer US, a role he occupied from 2018 until he stepped down at the end of 2022 to launch Partridge LLC.

Over the past decades, Scott Partridge has assumed a leadership role in advancing alternative dispute resolution policies nationwide, including membership on the Boards of Directors of the prestigious International Institute for Conflict Prevention & Resolution, as well as the American Arbitration Association International Center for Dispute Resolution Foundation.  And just recently in 2022, he became a member of the Board of Advisors of the highly regarded non-profit RAND Center for Mass Claims and Compensation.