Raised by parents born during the Great Depression, Toyota Managing Counsel Scott Young and his siblings learned early the values of hard work and thrift. College was not optional, but paying for it was their responsibility.
“We planned, saved and value engineered everything,” Young said.
Yet, no matter how tight finances were, Young’s mother always made room for one more person around her dinner table or on a spare mattress. The family lived in college towns throughout Young’s childhood, and there was no shortage of people in need. Some guests stayed for a Sunday lunch, others stayed for a semester. She welcomed acquaintances as readily as friends, guided by a deep belief in the words of the Gospel of Matthew: “I was a stranger and ye took me in.”
Watching her live those words, Young learned an important lesson that would guide him through his life and legal career.
“Life is a team sport,” Young said. “We are all better when we look out for each other.”
Young is being recognized by the Association of Corporate Counsel’s DFW Chapter and The Texas Lawbook with a 2025 Corporate Counsel Award for Achievement in Pro Bono and Public Service. A ceremony will be held Jan. 29 at the George W. Bush Institute.
“Over the course of his career, Scott has exemplified what it means to be a servant-leader,” said Sandra Phillips, chief legal officer of Toyota Motor North America. “His unwavering commitment to education, mentorship, public service and professional development has left a lasting impact on countless individuals and institutions.”
Young was born in Williamsburg, Virginia, the youngest of six children. His father was an engineer. After his parents separated when he was 8 years old, his mother went to work as a secretary making $3.85 per hour.
A visit from a guidance counselor to his third-grade class spurred Young’s interest in the legal field. The counselor assigned the students to draw a picture of what they wanted to be when they grew up.
“I panicked, knowing that I didn’t have an artistic bone in my body, so I drew the first thing that came to my mind — a circle with two squiggly lines with a nearby hammer, representing a head with robe and gavel — which I explained to the guidance counselor was a picture of a judge,” Young said.
The counselor explained that becoming a judge would first require becoming a lawyer.
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“I immediately set my sights on becoming a lawyer,” Young said. “While I of course pressure tested that idea at various times throughout my academic career to ensure the vocation matched my skillset, I have never seriously contemplated anything else.” (Young said he no longer harbors aspirations of becoming a judge.)
When Young was 13, his mother moved her children to Utah, where his oldest brother had opened a medical practice. Young later attended Utah State University.
After a year of college, Young took a break to spend two years doing religious and humanitarian work in a poor region of Mexico.
He lived among families in cardboard shacks and children with little food, clothing or toys — yet they insisted on sharing what little they had with him, Young said, calling it a “modern-day version of the widow’s mite.”
“They saw me as a human being and wanted to share what little they had, because they too viewed life as a team sport,” Young said. “I vowed to aways remember those moments and to pay them forward in whatever way I could.”
Young’s heart for legal pro bono work developed after he returned to school.
Research he conducted on criminal recidivism showed that providing incarcerated people with educational opportunities reduced repeat offenses and improved behavior during incarceration, thereby saving taxpayers millions of dollars annually. Drawing on this information, Young and a couple of schoolmates drafted state legislation to extend university classes to state prisons via satellite downlinks. The bill passed and became law.
“I was immediately hooked and continued seeking opportunities to blend compassion with the rule of law,” Young said.
Young graduated with a bachelor’s degree in political science in 2001 and went on to the University of Texas School of Law. After graduating, Young joined Jenkens & Gilchrist in its real estate practice, later moving with a group of lawyers to Fulbright & Jaworski — now Norton Rose Fulbright — in 2006.
As a young associate, Young responded to an email from the Dallas Volunteer Attorney Program seeking a real estate lawyer to help a family on a pro bono basis. The case proved to be more complex than Young anticipated, but with the help of firm colleagues, Young secured a mortgage modification to avoid foreclosure for his client.
“I was grateful for partners who helped answer my questions and for firm policies that allowed pro bono hours to count toward billables,” Young said.
Young went in-house in 2011, initially joining TGI Fridays, where he helped revive the development program, supported its sale and played a role in its transformation from an operator to a franchisor.
In 2017, encouraged by his friend Derek Lipscombe, Young joined Toyota Motor North America. He initially focused on real estate, construction, dealer investments and other corporate transactions. He later expanded his role to include major development projects, economic incentives and nonlitigation antitrust matters, becoming more of an advisor to the business.
“Today’s business clients want their in-house counsel to be strategic partners — entrepreneurs who not only know their business, but who have business savvy and judgment to lead both legal and nonlegal teams,” Young said. “Gone are the days when in-house counsel can evaluate risk, make a recommendation and check out. But that is exactly why corporate law has been so rewarding during my nearly 15 years within the corporate ranks. Some of my most satisfying projects have been those where my contribution was as much business strategy as risk mitigation, industry relationship building as document drafting.”
In one case, Young helped rescue a deteriorating, underfunded company asset that was slated for disposal. Working closely with engineers, he developed and championed a creative business model that brought in external paying users without additional capital investment. Despite skepticism and no upfront funding, the plan succeeded, transforming the asset into a self-sustaining operation that now generates millions of dollars in revenue.
In another major accomplishment, Young played a key legal leadership role in Toyota’s nearly $14 billion investment in state-of-the-art manufacturing facility in North Carolina. He and his team managed extensive negotiations, site selection, financing and development, ultimately supporting the facility through construction and into mass production. Along the way, the team overcame significant legal hurdles, including technology licensing, land acquisition and development issues, constriction disputes, supply chain challenges and incentive negotiations.
Alongside his corporate work, Young has been a driving force behind Toyota’s pro bono initiatives, which he views as a natural extension of the company’s core values: respect for people and continuous improvement.
Young “is often referred to as a ‘rockstar’ of pro bono law,” said Reed Smith partner Sarah Cummings Stewart, who nominated Young for the award.
Young has chaired the company’s pro bono committee since 2018, and in that time the team has completed 10 estate planning clinics and provided more than 200 estate plans for Plano first responders and provided extensive support to organizations serving vulnerable communities, including the Housing Crisis Center in Dallas and Mosaic Family Services, which assist individuals transitioning out of homelessness, domestic violence and human trafficking. They’ve staffed numerous DVAP veterans clinics, helped with Southern Methodist University School of Law’s Children’s Advocacy Clinic, assisted Afghan women fleeing gender-based persecution in obtaining asylum, participated in several Dallas County Expunction Expos, hosted a pro bono fair on the Toyota campus and much more. The committee and department have won several state and national awards under Young’s tenure.
Young has also personally contributed hundreds of volunteer hours to disaster recovery, domestic violence shelters and legal aid for low-income Texans, said Stewart, who added that Young helped forge a relationship between Reed Smith and the Association of Corporate Counsel’s DFW Chapter to jointly handed pro bono matters.
“Scott is a remarkable person and tireless advocate for the power of law to serve and uplift,” Stewart said. “He approaches every opportunity to assist those in need with vision and compassion.”
His work reflects the guiding belief molded by watching his mother’s service to others and the kindness of the poor he experienced during his community service trip to Mexico.
“Life is a team sport. We are all better when we look out for each other.”
Fun Facts: Scott Young
- Favorite book: Sometime around the start of kindergarten, my childhood best friend gave me a copy of The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein. Its simple story of love, compassion and self-sacrifice captivated me as a young boy. I have read it to my children and others many times over the years. Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables is a close second for similar reasons, although I didn’t read that one until high school.
- Favorite music group: Bon Jovi
- Favorite movie: Star Wars — the original trilogy
- Favorite restaurant and food at that restaurant: Bob’s Steak & Chop House — wedge salad, onion rings, medium well filet mignon and brownie sundae with extra ice cream.
- Favorite beverage: I don’t drink alcohol, coffee or tea, so my favorite beverage is lemonade. I especially love berry-infused lemonade like raspberry lemonade.
- Favorite vacation: My wife and I celebrated our 25th anniversary in Italy a few summers ago. Florence, Cinque Terra, Rome, Capri and more. Everything was magical.
- Hero in life: This one is a no brainer — my wife, Julie, is my hero. She is an amazing combination of kindness, caring, sacrifice and intelligence. She put her very promising career on hold to raise our six amazing, smart, rambunctious and hungry children. She is constantly thinking about what challenges our children are facing, how they can learn important life lessons, what are their next steps in school and ways we can gel cohesively together as a successful family unit. Her patience is unending, yet she sets appropriate limits and teaches our children right from wrong. Her life’s work is far more difficult than mine, and she does a far better job at it than I do at mine.
- Surprising fact about yourself: I’m a thrill-seeker. I have jumped out of an airplane, dived with large sharks and orcas (both inside and outside of shark cages), free-fallen 12 stories, camped in a snow cave I built, held my breath for over 4 minutes, bungee jumped, hiked portions of the Appalachian Trail and much more.