Shira A. Scheindlin is a United States District Judge for the Southern District of New York. She was nominated by President Bill Clinton on July 28, 1994. Before taking her current seat on the Southern District bench in November 1994, Judge Scheindlin worked as a prosecutor (Assistant United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York), commercial lawyer (General Counsel for the New York City Department of Investigation and partner at Herzfeld & Rubin), and judge (Magistrate Judge in the Eastern District of New York, 1982–86, and Special Master in the Agent Orange mass tort litigation). Judge Scheindlin is known for her intellectual acumen, demanding courtroom demeanor, aggressive interpretations of the law, and expertise in mass torts, electronic discovery, and complex litigation. During her tenure, Judge Scheindlin has presided over a number of high profile cases, many of which advanced important new positions in the common law. Judge Scheindlin issued two notable and highly publicized rulings in 2013 in regards to New York City's controversial stop-and-frisk procedures: one found the NYPD’s procedures unconstitutional, and the other ordered the city to implement reforms under the supervision of a court-appointed monitor.

She also has been a member of the Judicial Conference of the United States Advisory Committee on the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (1998–2005), where she served as a member of the Discovery Subcommittee and Chair of the Special Master Subcommittee. She is a member of the American Law Institute (where she served on the Advisors Consultative Group on the Aggregate Litigation Project), a former Chair of the Commercial and Federal Litigation Section of the New York State Bar Association ("NYSBA"), a former Board Member of the New York County Lawyers Association ("NYCLA"), a member of the Advisory Board of the Sedona Conference, a member of the American Bar Association (ABA) Committee on the Independence of the Federal Judiciary, and a member or past member of several committees of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York.

She is the recipient of the Brennan Award from the NYSBA, the Weinfeld Award and the William Nelson Cromwell Awards of the NYCLA, the Judicial Recognition Award of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and in 2014 was the winner of the very prestigious Full Ward from the New York State Bar Association. She is the co-author of the first casebook on electronic discovery and digital evidence (Shira A. Scheindlin, Daniel J. Capra, & The Sedona Conference, Electronic Discovery and Digital Evidence, Cases and Materials 454 [2008]), a book on electronic discovery (Electronic Discovery and Digital Evidence in a Nutshell), many articles, including most recently an article on the intersection of recent amendments to Rule 53 and Rules 26–37 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, a pamphlet supplement to Moore's Federal Practice on the Newly Amended Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, and a chapter on this subject in the ABA's multi-volume treatise on Federal Civil Practice. She is an adjunct professor of law at Cardozo Law School (previously she held the same position at the Brooklyn Law School), and a frequent lecturer. On the subject of electronic records management, the opinions in Zubulake v. UBS Warburg LLC have come to be recognized as case law landmarks.