Peter Baugher

Mr. Baugher prosecutes and defends commercial cases throughout the United States. He has won major trials, including a multi-million dollar contractual indemnification suit, a million dollar jury verdict in a business acquisition dispute, a multi-million dollar claim against the U.S. Government, and a recent trial in Delaware Chancery Court. Representing a Texas bank in New York federal court, Mr. Baugher obtained a $53 million judgment against Iraq’s primary commercial bank, and subsequently pursued the Central Bank of Iraq for further relief through successful Second Circuit appeals in 1998 and 2002.

Mr. Baugher has represented clients in matters involving breach of contract and fraud, commercial banking, securities fraud and insider trading, corporate control and intracorporate disputes, patent and trademark infringement, trade secrets, employee noncompete and confidentiality agreements, antitrust, class action, and product liability claims. His clients have included AK Steel Corporation, DeVry, The Fairchild Corporation, Credit Suisse First Boston, Frontier Corporation, The Northern Trust Bank, Household International, Comdisco, J.P. Morgan Chase Bank, and Nabisco Corporation. He has testified as a witness, most recently as an expert on U.S. securities laws and litigation at a trial in the Bahamas.

Mr. Baugher is President of the Chicago International Dispute Resolution Association, and was principal drafter of Illinois’ 1998 International Commercial Arbitration Act. He has arbitrated business disputes independently and for the American Arbitration Association and National Association of Securities Dealers (FINRA). He has chaired both the Chicago Bar Association’s Federal Civil Practice Committee and its International and Foreign Law Committee, is a member of the American Law Institute and the American Bar Association, and served on the Seventh Circuit Bar Association's American Jury Project Commission. He is a member of the Illinois Bar and the Trial Bar of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, and is admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court. Mr. Baugher is a member of the Executive Committee of Schopf & Weiss.

Mr. Baugher lectures frequently on litigation topics to bar groups and industry associations. He serves as a director of the Sabre Foundation, the country's leading international book donation organization, and was for many years a director of the Illinois Humanities Council. In 2003, he received the Arnold Berlin Award for Service to Princeton University. In 2005, a statewide survey published in Chicago Magazine ranked Mr. Baugher one of the top ten attorneys in Illinois, and he is routinely listed in professional polls as one the state's foremost business litigators and arbitrators.

Mr. Baugher graduated from Yale Law School in 1973, where he was an editor of the Yale Review of Law and Social Action. He received his undergraduate degree from Princeton University in 1970. Following law school, Mr. Baugher clerked for Seventh Circuit Judge Philip W. Tone. Before joining Schopf & Weiss in 1989, Mr. Baugher was a partner at Schiff Hardin & Waite, and Adams, Fox, Adelstein & Rosen.