Jeff Ward
Lecturing Fellow
Jeff Ward is a supervising attorney in Duke Law School’s Community Development Clinic. His current research focuses on the role of charitable organizations in community economic development, an interest fueled by the joy he receives from working with the passionate leaders of community-based nonprofit organizations.
Before coming to Duke, Ward served as a Public Interest Law Initiative (PILI) Fellow at the Community Economic Development Law Project of the Chicago Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Inc., where he counseled and developed resources for community nonprofits and, in partnership with the City of Chicago Department of Business Affairs, provided legal and planning advice to start-up entrepreneurs.
As an associate with the Chicago office of Latham & Watkins, Ward focused on M&A and capital markets transactions and devoted his time to pro bono initiatives. He offered presentations on issues pertinent to nonprofits for The Law Project and taught issues of constitutional law to students in Chicago Public Schools as part of Lawyers in the Classroom, a program of the Constitutional Rights Foundation of Chicago.
Ward earned a JD/LLM in International & Comparative Law from Duke Law School, where he graduated magna cum laude and Order of the Coif. He received the James S. Bidlake Memorial Award for Excellence in Legal Analysis, Research, and Writing; faculty awards both for Clinical Practice and for International, Transnational, and Comparative Law; and the Justin Miller Award for Integrity. Ward served as student director of the Duke Law Innocence Project, as an assistant to Professors John Weistart (Contracts) and Ralf Michaels (Comparative Law), and as an editor of Law & Contemporary Problems, for which he was a co-recipient of the David Cavers Award for outstanding editing.
During the 2009-2010 academic year, Ward was a visiting assistant professor at Duke Law School, where he taught in Duke's Community Enterprise Clinic as well as a course in Rhetoric & Advocacy.
Ward graduated from the University of Notre Dame, summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, with a BA in the Program of Liberal Studies (Great Books) and a concentration in Philosophy, Politics, & Economics. He also holds an MA in Literature from Northern Illinois University, where he won the national PC Somerville Award for academic scholarship, service, and promise as an educator.
Before turning to the law, Ward worked first as a business consultant with Arthur Andersen in Chicago and then as an English teacher in the Chicago suburbs. He is married with two very spunky children.
