Edward Sponzilli Appointed Chair of the New Jersey State Bar Association’s Higher Education Committee

Edward G. Sponzilli, a Member of the Bridgewater-based law firm Norris McLaughlin, P.A., has been appointed Chair of the New Jersey State Bar Association’s Higher Education Committee.

NJSBA serves, protects, fosters, and promotes the personal and professional interests of its members.  It serves as the voice of New Jersey attorneys to other organizations, governmental entities, and the public with regard to the law, legal profession, and legal system, and promotes access to the justice system and fairness in its administration.  The organization fosters professionalism and pride in the profession, as well as within NJSBA.  It provides educational opportunities to New Jersey attorneys to enhance the quality of legal services and the practice of law, as well as to the New Jersey public to enhance awareness of the legal profession and legal system.

The Higher Education Committee brings together attorneys who represent colleges and universities and provides a forum within which bar members can share information and provide programs, lectures and opportunities to meet on a myriad of topics that challenge or inform the college and university community.

A resident of Caldwell, Sponzilli is admitted to practice in New Jersey, New York and the District of Columbia.  He is a New Jersey Supreme Court Certified Civil Trial Attorney with more than 40 years of experience in complex corporate and commercial litigation.  He has litigated cases in many different jurisdictions, including employment litigation relating to restrictive covenants, wrongful termination, CEPA, employment discrimination, and sexual harassment.  He has defended civil rights, products liability, toxic tort, and professional malpractice claims.  Additionally, Sponzilli has handled matters involving franchise practices, intellectual property, health care, estate, real estate, construction, antitrust, commodities, civil RICO, Fair Credit Reporting Act, consumer fraud, shareholder disputes, civil rights, constitutional law, sports law, personal injury, insurance and reinsurance coverage matters, dram shop, alcohol, defamation, business tort, criminal, and education law matters.

Sponzilli is a 2008 recipient of the Professionalism Award.  In 1999 he was awarded the New Jersey Supreme Court’s Fund for Client Protection’s “Client Protection” Award for his outstanding service on behalf of the public and the Bar of New Jersey in his role as Chancery Court-appointed Receiver in the case of Montano v. Cohen & Cohen.

Sponzilli is a past president of the C. Willard Heckel Inn of Court and the Rutgers—Newark Law School Alumni Association.  He has been a Trustee of the Trial Attorneys of New Jersey for thirty years.  He has been on the faculty of the National Institute for Trial Advocacy for nearly twenty years and, for a decade, has been one of only two non-government faculty members in the New Jersey Attorney General’s Trial Advocacy Institute.  Sponzilli is currently a master of the New York City American Inn of Court and the Lifland (federal practice) American Inn of Court.  He has served as a federal arbitrator and state court certified mediator.

Sponzilli has been selected for inclusion in The Best Lawyers in America and New Jersey Super Lawyers, as well as Marquis’ Who’s Who in American Law and Who’s Who in America.  He is a member of the New Jersey Supreme Court Committee, Bench, Bar, and Media.

Sponzilli was a Judicial Law Clerk for The Honorable James A. Coolahan, U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey (D.N.J.) from 1975-77.  During the two-year clerkship, Judge Coolahan had a temporary assignment to the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and was a member of the only en banc sitting of the District of New Jersey in its history.  Sponzilli earned his J.D. from Rutgers University Law School in 1975, his M.A. from Columbia University in 1972, and his B.A., magna cum laude, from Rutgers University in 1971.  He was also a member of Phi Beta Kappa national academic fraternity.