Jane Dalton, a longtime employment litigator at Duane Morris who served as 2007 Chancellor of the Bar Association, passed away on December 20.
“Jane was a trailblazer; she was the first female associate and the first female partner at Duane Morris, where she spent her entire career as a distinguished employment litigator,” said current Chancellor Katayun I. Jaffari. “She was a strong mentor for young attorneys, and she was commended for her professionalism, confidence and calm, level-headed leadership. She was deeply involved in the Bar Association, moving from committee chair to the Board of Governors, to eventually becoming just the fourth female Chancellor in our Association’s more than 200-year history. Her passing is a tremendous loss to the Philadelphia legal profession. We express our deepest condolences to her family.”
During Dalton’s tenure as Chancellor, the Association focused on the importance of judicial independence and promoting the work of its Commission on Judicial Selection and Retention. The Association also worked with partners to identify a new location for the Family Court complex, which ultimately relocated to a new building on Arch Street in 2014. The Association’s Board of Governors also unanimously adopted a Call to Action and Best Practices for retaining and promoting women attorneys, encouraging law firms across the city to remove barriers to full and equal participation of female legal professionals at all levels of their organizations.
Prior to becoming Chancellor, Dalton served as chair of the Board of Governors and chair of the Large Firm Management, Women in the Profession, Strategic Planning and Public Service/Consumer Protection Committees. She was also founding co-chair of the Business Law Section’s Human Resources Committee. Dalton received the Business Law Section’s Dennis Replansky Award in 2011.
She was also a former trustee of the Philadelphia Bar Foundation, serving as vice president and chair of the Fundraising Committee and Access to Justice Campaign. In 2012, she was the recipient of the Women in the Profession Committee’s Justice Sandra Day O’Connor Award, which is given annually to a female attorney who exemplifies the qualities that Justice O’Connor has demonstrated in her life and work.
In an article in The Philadelphia Lawyer introducing Dalton to members at the start of her Chancellor year, former Chancellor Abe Reich, described her as “solid as the Rock of Gibraltar, the consummate professional.” “She commands wide respect, she is forceful through the power of persuasion, not the decibel of her voice,” Reich said. “She has unparalleled dignity and will bring credit to our Association as its leader.”
A graduate of the Smith College and the University of Pennsylvania, Dalton grew up in suburban Cleveland, Ohio. In the article in The Philadelphia Lawyer, Dalton recalled how her father, an engineer, passed on his “compulsion to plan” and his enthusiasm for organization. After graduating from Smith College, Dalton moved to Philadelphia and worked for two years for the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority, working with homeowners who had received low-interest loans to renovate and restore their dwellings. There were few opportunities for women to advance at the Redevelopment Authority, thus Dalton decided to pursue law school and a career as an attorney. During her second year at Penn, she became a summer associate at Duane Morris. At the time, she was also pregnant with her first child.
“I came in feeling like Hester Prynne,” Dalton recalled in a 2012 article in The Legal Intelligencer. But she said David Sykes, then head of the firm’s hiring program and later a mentor to Dalton, was also expecting a child and helped persuade the rest of the firm to hire her. As she began work and grew her practice, she found strong mentors among the then all-male leadership at the firm.
Dalton was recognized by Philadelphia Magazine as a Pennsylvania Super Lawyer from 2006-2016.
In addition to her work at Duane Morris and the Bar Association, Dalton was also appointed by then-Mayor Ed Rendell to chair the Police Advisory Commission, which worked to improve relationships between the Philadelphia Police and the public. When she stepped down from the Commission, her work was recognized by a proclamation from then-Mayor John Street. Dalton was also recognized with a 2005 Women of Distinction Award from the National Association of Women Business Owners and the Philadelphia Business Journal.
Relatives and friends are invited to a Celebration of Life on Tuesday, January 6, 2026. A visitation will be held from 9-10 a.m. at the Emil J. Ciavarelli Funeral Homes and Crematory, 951 E. Butler Pike, Ambler, PA, followed by a 10 a.m. Celebration of Life. Interment will be private. In lieu of flowers, memorial donations in Jane's name can be made to The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research, http://www.michaeljfox.org.
