Jonathan Sheffield practices at the Illinois Attorney General's Office, where he litigates civil appeals on behalf state officials and agencies in matters involving constitutional questions, federal jurisdiction, state executive authority, governmental immunities, environmental issues and eminent domain. He has drafted briefs and dispositive motions filed in federal and state courts of appeals and the Supreme Court of the United States, and argued cases in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and Illinois appellate courts.
He joined the Attorney General's Office following clerkships at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and with the Honorable Robert C. Chambers of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia.
In law school, Sheffield concentrated on public interest work in the areas of affordable and fair housing, working at the Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity Office of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Legal Aid Chicago (formerly LAF), Equip for Equality and Loyola's Health Justice Project. He previously served in the Jesuit Volunteer Corps in New York City, New York, and Portland, Maine, where he worked with people experiencing homelessness, living with HIV/AIDS and facing other justice issues.
Sheffield also serves as an adjunct professor of law at the University of Illinois Chicago School of Law, where he has taught first-year legal writing.