Jeffrey Swope

Jeffrey Swope represents colleges and universities in a wide range of matters, including litigation, student and faculty issues, internal investigations, and federal and state regulatory matters. He also assists colleges and universities considering or implementing closure of academic programs, including dealing with the myriad regulatory, student, faculty, staff and financial issues that need to be addressed.

Jeffrey's representative experience includes:

• Advising nationally ranked medical school regarding faculty tenure issues to achieve major cost savings
• Assisting colleges in assessing and implementing closure of academic programs
• Defense against a federal subpoena issued pursuant to the United States-United Kingdom Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty for access to confidential interview materials in Boston College Archives
• Defense against a subpoena in the government's Microsoft antitrust litigation for the research materials of a scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, resulting in the recognition of a privilege for such materials in the First Circuit
• Negotiated settlement of a major wrongful-death claim by a student’s estate against a university
• Defense in jury trials of complex employee claims for pension rights and wrongful denials of promotion
• Design, and defense at trial and on appeal, of a municipality’s no-cost acquisition of the assets of a private water company valued in excess of $4 million through exercise of a purchase option in a nineteenth-century statutory franchise

Jeff has served as a trial adviser and judge in trial-practice courses at Harvard Law School, and as a trial-practice adviser and lecturer at legal education programs for Massachusetts Continuing Legal Education.