About W. Scott
W. Scott Bales left a long public-law career and returned to private practice after decades in courtrooms and state offices. He built a résumé that runs from federal prosecution to the state’s highest bench, then into legal reform and consulting. His education set that path. Bales earned a B.A. in economics and history from Michigan State University in 1974, completed an M.A. in economics at Harvard in 1978, and took his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1980.
His early legal work was in private firm practice in Phoenix. By the mid-1980s he was with Meyer, Hendricks, Victor, Osborn & Maledo. He moved into public service in the 1990s, serving as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Arizona in 1995. A few years later he worked at the U.S. Department of Justice as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Policy Development in 1998. In 1999 he served as Solicitor General in the Arizona Attorney General’s Office, representing the state in appellate litigation.
Bales returned to private practice at Lewis and Roca LLP in 2001, then joined the Arizona Supreme Court in 2005 as a justice. Colleagues selected him to serve as Chief Justice in 2014. His years on the bench encompassed management of the state’s judicial administration as well as opinion writing and case adjudication. Those roles put him at the intersection of law, institutional governance, and court procedure.
After leaving the court, Bales took a post in the nonprofit world. In 2019 he became Executive Director of the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System (IAALS), where he worked on projects tied to court efficiency and legal-system reform. In 2020 he established Scott Bales LLC and began working as counsel, advising on appellate matters, court administration questions, and policy issues that touch the judiciary.
His career threads—trial and appellate practice, federal and state service, judicial leadership, and policy work—give him a practical view of how rules and institutions interact. He has moved between arguing cases, drafting policy, and managing a court, and those shifts surface in the kinds of matters he accepts and the advice he provides.
Today he operates through Scott Bales LLC. He handles appellate matters and provides counsel on legal policy and judicial-administration issues.
