Jeffrey Jones

Jeff Jones is a Retired Partner at Edwards Wildman Palmer and, since 2007, has been College Counsel at Williams College. He graduated from Williams College in 1966, served in the United States Navy from 1966 to 1970, and graduated from Harvard Law School in 1973. He then clerked for Chief Justice G. Joseph Tauro on the Supreme Judicial Court from 1973–1974. Jeff went on to join Palmer & Dodge in 1974 and became a partner in 1980. From 1998–2005, he served as Managing Partner of Palmer & Dodge until its merger with Edwards & Angell. Although his principal practice area was commercial litigation, throughout his years at Palmer & Dodge, Jeff devoted a substantial portion of his time to representation of, and service with, a variety of nonprofit organizations, including Williams College where he is now employed on a part-time basis as the college’s first in-house counsel.

Jeff served for many years as Chair of the Law Firm Resources Project of the Boston Bar Association and, more recently, was Co-chair for several years of the BBA’s summer jobs project. Jeff is a Director and former Board Chair of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Boston and a Trustee of the Willow Hill School, a special needs school in Sudbury, Massachusetts. He has previously served as a Trustee of Radcliffe College, a Trustee of the ACLU Foundation of Massachusetts, a Trustee of uAspire (formerly ACCESS), and a Director and Board Chair of the West Suburban YMCA.

During his Access to Justice Fellowship, Jeff will continue his work with uAspire, an organization that partners with schools and community organizations to provide free financial aid advice to young people to help them overcome financial barriers to postsecondary education. Although he has completed his service as Trustee, he will continue to assist uAspire in completing a project, begun at his initiative, to convert the legal structure of the organization from a Massachusetts trust to a Massachusetts nonprofit corporation. With the Boys & Girls Clubs of Boston, Jeff will continue to assist the organization in addressing a variety of legal issues, including providing advice on when outside counsel should be engaged in particular matters.