Shavar Jeffries is president of Democrats for Education Reform, and its affiliate organization, Education Reform Now.
Shavar ran an institutional-reform and class-action litigation clinic at Seton Hall Law School's Center for Social Justice in Newark, New Jersey. In this role, he helped numerous clients, in both individual and class actions, defend themselves against consumer fraud, unlawful education policies, and housing inequity, among other matters.
From 2008 to 2010, Shavar was counsel to New Jersey Attorney General Anne Milgram. Shavar oversaw all multi-state investigations, ranging from securities and consumer fraud to environmental protection and products liability. He also supervised the Division on Civil Rights, the Juvenile Justice Commission, and the Victims of Crime Compensation Organization.
Earlier in his career, Shavar was counsel to the firm and Deputy Director of the Gibbons Fellowship in Public Interest and Constitutional Litigation at Gibbons P.C., where he worked on a variety of complex-litigation and class-action matters, including cases involving consumer fraud, voting rights, affordable housing, and special education. He clerked for Nathaniel R. Jones, a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and worked as an associate at Wilmer Cutler & Pickering, where he defended the University of Michigan in affirmative-action litigation challenging its admissions policies, and represented large institutional clients in class-action employment cases. He currently is a partner at Lowenstein Sandler LLP. Shavar graduated from Duke University and Columbia Law School.
An advocate for social justice for 20 years, Shavar is deeply involved in community and board service. He is on the boards of several organizations that focus on developing young people, including the National Mentoring Partnership, New Classrooms, KIPP New Jersey, and Seton Hall Preparatory School, and also sits on the advisory boards for NextWork and One Love. He has served in elected office, serving a term on the Newark Public Schools advisory board, including a term as president, and ran for mayor of Newark, receiving over 46% of the vote, a historic total for a first-time run for municipal office.
Shavar has been recognized broadly for his social-justice work—to name a few, he’s been honored by the NAACP, the National Bar Association, the Garden State Bar Association, the Congressional Black Caucus, KIPP New Jersey, and the Essex County Family Justice Center, among others.