Legacy of Leadership
JEFFREY D. ROBINSON ’80
ACHIEVES CAREER SUCCESS AND
ENCOURAGES OTHERS TO FOLLOW.
BY RON DEVLIN | PHOTOGRAPHY BY DAVID W. COULTER
As a high school student in New Castle, Del.,
Jeffrey D. Robinson ’80, now senior partner in the Washington law firm of Baach, Robinson & Lewis PLLC, attended an Intro to Engineering session at Lehigh University. Truth be told, though, he was more interested in political science than engineering.
“We also heard about Lafayette and wanted to see it,” he recalls.
Good thing, for in Kirby Hall of Civil Rights he found a vision
that would profoundly influence his life, an embodiment of ideals stirring within him.
The building exuded a solemn, almost spiritual reverence for the law and the idea that it applied to everyone, regardless of creed or color. That Lafayette would dedicate such an imposing building to civil rights so impressed Robinson that he enrolled as a government and law major and went on to graduate summa cum laude and receive the Pepper Prize.
“Lafayette was one of the most important experiences of my life,”
he says. “It did everything for me that I could hope a college could do.”
The encouragement of professors broadened his horizons, and
the academic challenges cultivated a notion that he could achieve whatever he put his mind to. Now he provides encouragement to Lafayette students through the Jeffrey Robinson ’80 Leadership Award, presented to accomplished students characterized by noteworthy leadership in college activities and student life.
His own record of leadership in service to others includes cochairing the Washington Lawyers Committee on Civil Rights and Urban Affairs, which handles civil rights cases in employment, housing, public accommodations, and other aspects of urban life, representing people with claims of discrimination based on race, gender, national origin, disability, age, religion, and sexual orientation and assisting immigrants.
After graduating from Yale Law School, Robinson earned a position at the Washington law firm of Wilmer, Cutler, and Pickering. As staff attorney to Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, then ranking minority member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, he worked on the nominations of William H. Rehnquist and Antonin Scalia to the Supreme Court.
He advised Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania on the nominations of Robert Bork and Anthony Kennedy to the high court. In the first two years of the Clinton administration, he served as deputy assistant attorney general in the office of legislative affairs, with substantial responsibility for the 1994 Crime Bill.
In 1996, Robinson was a founding partner in Baach, Robinson & Lewis. The 35-lawyer firm represents individuals and businesses involved in criminal and regulatory investigations and handles complex insurance coverage cases. It also represents individuals victimized by predatory
or discriminatory lending practices.
Professionally, his “ultimate frustration” came as a trial counsel for Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore in his challenge to the Florida vote count in 2000. “It’s the only case I ever lost that I’m reminded of every time I turn on the television,” Robinson says. “The ‘other guy’ is the President of the United States.”
One day, riding in a van from the Supreme Court, Robinson asked another Gore attorney where he went to college. “Lafayette,” replied Mitchell W. Berger ’77. “Imagine!” Robinson says. “At such an important moment in the nation’s history, you find two guys from Lafayette together.”
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