l                                                                                                                                                                            For Immediate Release:                                                                               For Further Information Contact
January 7, 2008                                                                                           David Wald 609-292-4791

ATTORNEY GENERAL NAMES NEW COUNSEL
Seton Hall Law School Professor Shavar Jeffries will be top advisor

 Trenton, NJ – Attorney General Anne Milgram today announced the appointment of Shavar Jeffries, an associate professor at Seton Hall University’s Law School, to be her new counsel, a top advisory position in the Office of the Attorney General.
 
 Jeffries, 33, will advise Milgram on legal issues and serve as a liaison in the Office of the Attorney General to many of the divisions within the Department of Law and Public Safety. Jeffries succeeds Michael Shipp, who was recently sworn in as a U.S. Magistrate Judge for the District of New Jersey.

Jeffries was president of the board of the Boys and Girls Club of Newark and the TEAM Academy Charter School in Newark. He is a member of the board of Seton Hall Prep School. 

“Shavar Jeffries will be an important addition to our staff in the Office of the Attorney General, and will be responsible for lending guidance and advice on a broad range of issues and topics,” Milgram said. “The position of counsel demands the kind of expertise and experience that he has gained in his career as an advocate and teacher.’’

"I am honored to have the opportunity to work with Attorney General Milgram in leading the department,’’ Jeffries said. “I'm particularly excited to support the Attorney General's work on issues of crime prevention, civil rights, and juvenile justice.  These matters lie at the heart of my life's work and at the center of the service I hope to provide to the people of New Jersey."

Jeffries, who lives in Newark, received a B.A. in history from Duke University in 1996 and his J.D. in 1999 from Columbia Law School, where, among a number of honors, he was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar and Paul Robeson Scholar, and Managing Editor of the Columbia Human Rights Law Review.

After law school, Jeffries clerked for Judge Nathaniel R. Jones of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Ohio.  Jeffries then worked as an associate with the law firm of Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering, where, among other matters, he defended the University of Michigan in affirmative-action litigation challenging its undergraduate and law-school admissions policies.

In the fall of 2001, Jeffries joined the law firm of Gibbons, P.C., as a John J. Gibbons Fellow in Public Interest and Constitutional Litigation. As a Gibbons Fellow, Jeffries engaged in a wide-range of issues, including the representation of newspapers seeking access to closed, post-9/11 immigration hearings, and the NAACP in challenging the State of New Jersey’s legislative apportionment plan. The firm named Jeffries Deputy Director of the Gibbons Fellowship in 2003, and appointed him Of Counsel in 2004.

Jeffries joined the Seton Hall Law School faculty in the summer of 2004. He teaches a Civil Litigation Clinic course, as well as criminal law.  Through the Civil Litigation Clinic, Professor Jeffries and his students engaged in public-interest litigation, focusing primarily on seeking to empower urban parents with greater control of their children’s education.

In addition to supervising the Civil Litigation Clinic, Jeffries was a Co-Director of the Law School’s Urban Revitalization Project, which seeks to impact the quality of life in urban communities through education and housing reform.  For his public-interest law advocacy, Jeffries received numerous awards, including recently being named a “Rising Star” by New Jersey Super Lawyers magazine and receiving the Byrne Distinguished Public Servant Award.

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