Ted Wells Co-Chairs the Paul, Weiss Litigation Department and is widely recognized as one of the nation’s best trial lawyers. He was named one of The Decade’s Most Influential Lawyers (2010) and Lawyer of the Year (2006) by The National Law Journal, “Trial Lawyer of the Year” by Benchmark Litigation (2019), and was recognized for Lifetime Achievement by the New York Law Journal (2017) and The American Lawyer (2020).
Some of his significant representations include the defense of former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Michael Espy; hedge fund manager Steven Cohen and SAC Capital Advisors; financier Michael Milken; I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby; and former New York Governors Eliot Spitzer and David Paterson.
Wells has led criminal and civil defense teams for major corporations, including Abbott Laboratories, AIG, Alcoa, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, ExxonMobil, Johnson & Johnson, JPMorgan, Merck and Mitsubishi, and investigations on behalf of the National Football League and 21st Century Fox.
Wells is a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers; Chairman Emeritus of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Board of Directors; and a Fellow of the Harvard Corporation, the 12-person board that governs all of Harvard University, and has degrees from Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School.
