Professor Jessica Lefort joins Michigan Law's Legal Practice Program

By Lori Atherton
U-M Law

Jessica Lefort has joined Michigan Law’s Legal Practice Program as a clinical assistant professor. She will teach Legal Practice Skills I and II and Legal Practice: Writing and Analysis. Lefort previously was an adjunct professor in the program.

“I’m excited to continue on full time and help cultivate students’ research and writing skills, which are so important to employers,” Lefort said.

Prior to joining the Law School, Lefort was a deputy defender with the Federal Defender Office in Detroit, where she represented indigent criminal defendants in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.

She previously was an honors trial attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice, Antitrust Division, in Washington, D.C., where she prosecuted national and international criminal conspiracies involving price-fixing and bid rigging, as well as procurement fraud cases involving Iraq and Afghanistan war reconstruction contracts.

She also served as a law clerk for The Hon. James B. Moran of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, and The Hon. David R. Grand and The Hon. Elizabeth A. Stafford of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan.

Lefort received her BA in philosophy from Grand Valley State University and her JD, summa cum laude and Order of the Coif, from DePaul University College of Law, where she was a Dean’s Scholar, Faculty Scholar, and member of the DePaul Law Review.

She received a Public Service Award from the law school for her service to the Public Interest Law Association that, among other things, provided scholarships for students pursuing unpaid public interest internships.

During law school, Lefort also co-edited the Mitigation Compendium for the Death Penalty Defense Team with notable death penalty litigator and former Michigan Law Professor Andrea Lyon.