Sarah Shalf

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 was elected co-chair of the AALS Section on Clinical Legal Education in 2024, and she serves on the board of the Clinical Legal Education Association. She is a frequent speaker on experiential and community-engaged teaching. She also leads the executive committee of the Virginia Lawyer Chapter of the American Constitution Society, and she received the ACS Faculty Advisor of the Year award in 2023. Locally, among other things, she serves as the Charlottesville appointee to the Board of the Monticello Area Community Action Agency, where she is currently chair. She was part of the fall 2023 cohort of the Leadership in Academic Matters program at UVA.

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 litigated at both the trial and appellate levels, including commercial cases involving technology, trademark and patent, RICO, class actions, and business torts, as well as a wide range of public interest litigation, including protest rights, voting rights and prisoner conditions cases. She is a past chair of the Technology Law Section of the State Bar of Georgia, and served on the Georgia Election Protection Legal Coordinating Committee in partnership with the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, including as a chair during the 2012, 2014 and 2016 elections. She was a founding chair of the Georgia Lawyer Chapter of the American Constitution Society starting in 2004, and served on its executive committee through 2019.