Seanna R. Brown

Associate Teaching Professor

Seanna R. Brown is an Associate Teaching Professor. She teaches Legal Communication and Research.

Brown comes to Syracuse Law from BakerHostetler LLP, where she was a partner in the firm’s New York office, co-chair of the New York Bankruptcy group, and led the firm’s pro bono committee. For nearly two decades, she served as the principal deputy to Irving Picard, the court-appointed SIPA trustee for the estate of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, since Madoff’s firm collapsed during the financial crisis in 2008.

Brown’s practice spanned complex commercial litigation, appellate advocacy, bankruptcy, and global asset recovery. Her work on the Madoff liquidation—unraveling the largest Ponzi scheme in U.S. history—involved negotiating billion-dollar settlements, deposing Bernard Madoff, leading trial teams, arguing before the Second Circuit on landmark questions of securities law and bankruptcy procedure, and overseeing the distribution of more than $14 billion in recovered assets to victims. Brown had a robust pro bono practice, representing the American Bar Association, the National Women’s Law Center, and the Fines, Fees and Justice Center before the Supreme Court and Circuit courts as amicus curiae on questions of the Sixth Amendment right to counsel, the Eighth Amendment prohibition on fines, and Title IX. She has also represented two death row inmates in their post-conviction proceedings in Georgia and Alabama.

Brown was recognized as a “Rising Star” by Law360 in Securities (2016) and by the New York Law Journal (2015) and was named a New York Metro Super Lawyer annually since 2013. She received the Thurgood Marshall Award from the Bar of the City of New York and was shortlisted by Chambers for Pro Bono Lawyer of the Year in 2019. Brown served on the Pro Bono Panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, the Steering Committee of the American Bar Association’s Death Penalty Representation Project, the board of the American Constitution Society, and the Hunter College Pre-Law Advisory Board.

Brown received her J.D. from Fordham University School of Law in 2006 and her B.A., magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, from Hunter College, City University of New York, in 2003. She is admitted to the New York bar and to practice before the Supreme Court of the United States and the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Second, Sixth, Ninth, Tenth, and Eleventh Circuits, as well as the U.S. District Courts for the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York.