Jeremy Sheff
Assistant Professor of Law
It was when he was serving as editor of the Harvard Law Review
while a student at Harvard Law School, that Jeremy Sheff says he
developed a great appreciation for the development and exchange of
ideas about the law.
“After a year of clerking and five years in private practice I
began to miss the intellectual exchange of the academic
environment. Now that I have made the transition to teaching,
I am sure that I made the right decision. I love my classes,
I love my research and I am constantly gratified by the engagement
of my students and colleagues,” says Professor Sheff.
Professor Sheff brings to St. John’s Law School years of corporate
law experience and several years of pro bono work he did
attempting to clear the record of a man who served a seven-year
prison term for a crime, Professor Sheff believes, he did not
commit. “I try to draw my students’ attention to the effect of
legal rules, particularly on communities in need.”
Now an Assistant Professor in St. John’s School of Law, Professor
Sheff teaches courses in trademarks and unfair competition law; and
property law. He says his decision to leave the corporate world was
one of the best decisions he ever made.
“Being an academic is very different from being a practitioner.
While I work just as hard or harder now than I did as an associate
at a Midtown law firm, the work of a law professor is very
different and—for me at least—more personally fulfilling.”
Professor Sheff says he enjoys being part of a faculty that has
made great strides in fostering a culture of scholarship and a
forward-thinking approach to legal education - exemplified by the
reinvigorated intellectual property law curriculum for the School
of Law.
“Professor Katharina de la Durantaye and I will both teach
‘Introduction to Intellectual Property’ the first step in the
process of creating a new curriculum. It will serve as a foundation
course for students who intend to specialize in intellectual
property and a general introduction for students who simply want to
get an understanding of what this area of law is about.”
Professor Sheff says he strives to not only inform his students of
the legal rules, but provide them with an understanding of the
policies behind the rules and the real-world effects that they
engender.
“I teach my students that the choices we make about the law
directly affect the kind of world we live in. The successful lawyer
will know how to select from and argue for those alternatives for
the benefit of their client; the great lawyer, over the course of a
career, can really make the world a more just place.”
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