Sarah Shalf

  • Professor of Law, General Faculty
  • Director of Clinical Programs

Sarah Shalf directs the Community Solutions Clinic and serves as the school’s director of clinical programs. Prior to joining the faculty at UVA, she was the director of the Externship Program and co-director of the Professionalism Program at Emory Law School, and she cotaught Catalyzing Social Impact at Emory’s Goizueta School of Business, an experiential course that enrolled both MBA students and J.D. students. She also was the faculty adviser for the David J. Bederman Emory Law School Supreme Advocacy Program, a student-run Supreme Court clinic.

Shalf has been active in AALS Clinical Section and Clinical Legal Education Association committee leadership, and she founded the Georgia Association for Legal Externships, a consortium of all Georgia law schools’ externship faculty. She serves on the executive committee of the Virginia Lawyer Chapter of the American Constitution Society, and has previously served as the founding chair of the Georgia Lawyer Chapter, as well as a chair of Election Protection’s Georgia Legal Committee. She has been a frequent speaker at workshops and conferences on clinical teaching as well as civil rights.
 
A native of Virginia, she is a graduate of both the College and the Law School at the University of Virginia. She was elected to the Order of the Coif and received the Margaret Hyde Award. She served as an executive editor on the Virginia Law Review and a justice on the William Minor Lile Moot Court Board.
 
After graduation from law school, she clerked for Judge Frank Hull on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, and then joined the Atlanta litigation boutique of Bondurant, Mixson & Elmore, where she practiced commercial litigation as well as a wide range of public interest litigation, including protest rights, voting rights and prisoner conditions cases.
 

Education

  • J.D.
    University of Virginia School of Law
    2001
  • M.S.
    University of North Carolina
    1996
  • B.A.
    University of Virginia
    1994

Book Chapters

Federal Regulatory Landscape, in Ethical Considerations for Research Involving Prisoners, National Academies Press, 73–100 (2007).

Articles & Reviews

The Legal Context of School Violence: Effectiveness of Federal, State & Local Law Enforcement Measures to Reduce Gun Violence in Schools (with Richard E. Redding), 23 Law & Policy 297–343 (2001).

Reports & Datasets

Legal Liability Issues Concerning Pre-Adjudicatory Drug Testing of Detained Individuals, NCJ 183500 (with Richard E. Redding)Report to the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services , U.S. Department of Justice Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency (1999).

Op-Eds, Blogs, Shorter Works

We Can Act to Protect Ourselves Against Gun Violence (with Kristen Widner), Newsweek (December 8, 2022).

Featured Scholarship