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Steven Scrogham dreamed of being a doctor. That is, until he saw his Peruvian friend suffer a severe injury when a porcelain sink cracked and fell on his foot. Suddenly, he realized he might not be made for the emergency room. It was time to find a new calling.
The fateful event happened three months into Scrogham’s two-year stint in St. Petersburg, Russia, as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It was a turbulent era with Russia on the brink of economic crisis. As Scrogham traveled the streets of St. Petersburg and saw the impact of globalization in a post-socialist society, he realized how much he enjoyed looking at complex issues from all sides.
By the time his plane touched down back in the United States, Scrogham had a new plan. “I was interested in international business and knew a law degree could put me in a position to help companies grow both domestically and internationally,” he explains. Scrogham immediately changed his major from pre-med to international politics and set out on a new path at Brigham Young University.
After graduating from BYU, Scrogham moved east to attend the University of Minnesota Law School before starting his law career representing public corporations as a securities associate in Milwaukee. After almost three years, he switched firms and was settling into life as a transactional and securities lawyer when he noticed something. “We were doing a lot of divestitures and not many acquisitions,” he says. It was 2007, and the financial crisis was about to hit.
As law firms contracted, Scrogham watched his friends and peers experience layoffs and struggle to bill hours. He took the opportunity to make another change, choosing to go in-house by taking a job with Abbott Laboratories in Chicago.
Scrogham’s transition from law firm to in-house practice was smooth. Abbott’s long history and established legal department afforded him the opportunity to learn from seasoned legal leaders, ask questions, and deepen his growing skill set. After three years, he found himself working exhaustively on Abbott’s 2012 spin-off of its branded pharmaceuticals business now known as AbbVie.
After the spin-off, Scrogham went with the new company and suddenly found himself thrust into a challenging and stretching role. “I had the rare opportunity to help build up a new public company,” he says. Not long after the spin-off, Scrogham worked on numerous major transactions and interacted directly with AbbVie’s senior leadership team. As he advised senior leaders in connection with major global mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and other financing transactions, Scrogham wanted to be seen as a key contributor. To find success, he would have to step up.
And step up, he did. A series of major deals made between 2013 and 2023 transformed AbbVie into the sixth-largest biomedical company in the world. The Fortune 100 company, with 50,000 employees, reached $54 billion in annual revenue last year.
In 2020, AbbVie finalized the $63 billion acquisition of Allergan. As Scrogham worked on the integration team, he enjoyed learning more about AbbVie’s commercial, operations, regulatory, and research and development functions. “I wanted to move on from being a subject-matter expert and get more exposure to the business,” he says. That desire compelled him to look for something new, and in the summer of 2023, Scrogham stepped into a new position as assistant general counsel and corporate secretary at ProFrac Services, a hydraulic fracturing service provider.
The acquisitive company with a proven record in energy and fracking had just gone public; Scrogham knew he would have the chance to learn a new industry and help build a strong compliance culture while establishing a robust internal legal team.
Scrogham tapped into his vast experience at publicly traded companies and started to put the foundations of a best-in-class team in place. After just six weeks, the company’s general counsel left. Scrogham saw another chance to step up. “I redoubled my efforts to build strong relationships and offered to do things that were outside of both my comfort zone and job description,” he says. “I focused on hitting a homerun on my traditional work while showing I could also be an asset on special projects.”
“Our teams working out in the field have very dangerous and high-stress jobs, and that’s how we make our money. We have to understand everything our employees do in the field if we want to add value as a top-tier legal department in our industry.”
Steven Scrogham
The plan worked. Six months after he joined ProFrac, Scrogham was promoted to chief legal officer, chief compliance officer, and corporate secretary in early 2024.
Not long after the move, Scrogham gave his team of six an unusual assignment—they went through the field training meant for employees that work on fracking sites. “Our teams working out in the field have very dangerous and high-stress jobs, and that’s how we make our money,” he explains. “We have to understand everything our employees do in the field if we want to add value as a top-tier legal department in our industry.”
Scrogham’s playbook is complex in practice but simple in theory. He intends to make his legal team a strong partner to the business by establishing a foundational culture of governance and compliance to finalize contracts with ProFrac customers that generate desirable outcomes for all parties. He also wants his team to complete M&A and finance deals to help the company execute its strategic priorities.
“Steve leads an impressive legal team at ProFrac. He’s laser-focused on empowering business results and fosters that approach across his team,” says James Bedar, partner at Brown Rudnick. “When we’re working with ProFrac on mergers and acquisitions, financings, or compliance matters, the work is complex and can be incredibly nuanced. In addition to his intellect, experience and drive, Steve’s success is due to his ability to cut through the details and tackle legal issues by asking, ‘How can we solve puzzle X to achieve business result Y?’ The entire legal team shares Steve’s business goal-oriented mindset because he leads by example.”
On the business side, ProFrac is focused on outperforming its 2023 results. This year, its operations and commercial teams are busy getting fleets up and running, improving usage rates, generating a top-tier customer experience, and cutting costs. Scrogham’s team, which he calls the best in the frack business, is once again ready to step up and help make an impact.
“As outside counsel, we have worked with Steven on many complex projects. He has shepherded numerous endeavors from inception to completion, working closely with us and we have truly always enjoyed working with him.”
—Hillary Holmes, Partner
