Peter Fox
(212) 729-7708
pfox@sprfllp.com

Admissions  

• New York 

• U.S. District Courts for the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York

• U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit

• U.S. Supreme Court

Education

• Columbia Law School, J.D. 2008 (James Kent Scholar) 

• Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs, M.P.A. 2009

• Skidmore College, B.A. 2004 (magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa)   

Clerkships

• Honorable Peter W. Hall, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (2010-2011)

• Honorable Nicholas G. Garaufis, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York (2011-2012)

Languages

• Portugese

• Spanish
  

Peter’s practice frequently involves complex transnational litigation and international commercial arbitration, often involving parallel or related proceedings in multiple jurisdictions.  As lead defense counsel to offshore cryptocurrency developers in a multi-jurisdictional dispute, Peter secured a total victory for his clients – successfully moving to dismiss the bulk of the plaintiff’s $170 million class-action claims and ultimately forcing opposing counsel to withdraw their motion for class certification and move for voluntary dismissal of the remaining case. Other recent favorable outcomes include compelling ICDR arbitration against a non-signatory in $36 million digital-asset dispute and winning, by published decision, a contested Bankruptcy SDNY Chapter 15 recognition proceeding on behalf of a Bulgarian agricultural company.

Fluent in Spanish and Portuguese, Peter has long focused on Latin American clients and matters.  He serves as U.S. counsel to a large Brazilian investment fund, has advised Mexican, Argentine, and Brazilian entities and individuals on questions of U.S. bankruptcy law, and recently represented the sellers of a multi-million-dollar portfolio of cellphone towers in Guatemala.  This work builds on Peter’s experience as an associate at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP from 2013 to 2016, where he worked on matters concerning some of the region’s largest economic players, including Petrobras, Vale, and Brasil Telecom. Peter currently serves as Secretary of the Inter-American Affairs Committee of the New York City Bar Association, where he also chairs the Subcommittee on Cuban Affairs.

Peter also has substantial experience with the emerging distributed-ledger-technology sector.  He has advised network developers, token issuers, and cryptofinance intermediaries and professional service providers on their obligations under U.S. securities and other regulatory law, and has been frequently quoted in the Financial Times and other press outlets on matters concerning digital assets and the law. 

Before co-founding the firm, Peter was Counselor to the Solicitor at the U.S. Department of Labor from 2016 to 2017, where he advised senior departmental officials on matters involving judicial review and congressional oversight of agency action, and where he helped formulate the Department’s litigation defense strategy.

From 2011-2012, Peter clerked for the Honorable Nicholas G. Garaufis of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York. From 2010 to 2011, he clerked for the Honorable Peter W. Hall of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Peter is admitted to practice, and has filed briefs, in multiple federal courts, including the Second Circuit and the U.S. Supreme Court.

Peter holds a JD from the Columbia Law School, where he was a James Kent Scholar, and a Master of Public Administration from the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Skidmore College in 2004.

Publications
Ripple v. SEC: Why the crypto industry may have celebrated too early, Fortune (August 10, 2023) (co-author)

Out of Balance: How California Gets Who Decides Non-Signatory Arbitrability Wrong, in “Pro Arbitration” Revisited: A Tribute to Professor George Bermann from his students over the years (Kabir Duggal et al. eds. 2023)

Justices Correctly Used Shadow Docket In OSHA Vax Ruling, Law360 (January 14, 2022)

What a Biden Administration Should Learn from the Trump Administration’s Regulatory Reversals, Brookings (2020) (co-author)

​States Can Lead Where OSHA Failed On Virus Standards, Law360 (July 28, 2020)

​Title III of Helms Burton: Opening the Floodgates? Cuba Capacity Building Project at Columbia Law School (2019), reprinted in OnCuba News (May 5, 2019) and The CLS Blue Sky Blog (May 14, 2019)

​OSHA’s Volks Rule: No Additional Burden, Confined Space (2017)

Discovery in Aid of Arbitration under 28 U.S.C. 1782, Global Arbitration Review (2016) (co-author)