About me
Dara Sheinfeld is Counsel and Head of Pro Bono Litigation at Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP. In this role, she helps manage the firm’s pro bono practice and supervises many pro bono matters, including federal Hague litigation, custody/visitation, abuse/neglect, child support, family offense, and matrimonial matters, criminal and family law appeals, criminal resentencing motions, clemency matters, and civil litigation. Given her vast trial experience, Ms. Sheinfeld plays an integral role in supervising associates on pro bono trials and developing the firm’s pro bono trial program.
Since 2017, Ms. Sheinfeld has handled or advised on successful New York State clemency campaigns for three survivors of domestic violence, cumulatively removing decades from their terms of incarceration.
Ms. Sheinfeld also provides monthly family law advice at three separate clinics – at the New York City Family Courts, through the Family Court Volunteer Lawyers Project; at the Manhattan Family Justice Center, through a collaboration with Sanctuary for Families; and at Taconic Correctional Facility, through the Incarcerated Mothers Law Project, facilitated by Volunteers of Legal Services.
Ms. Sheinfeld previously worked as a Family Law Director at Sanctuary for Families, where she oversaw the practices in the Bronx and Manhattan Family Justice Centers. Prior to working at Sanctuary for Families, Ms. Sheinfeld was a litigation associate at Davis Polk. Early in her legal career, Ms. Sheinfeld also clerked for the Honorable Harold Baer, Jr. in the Southern District of New York. In 2006, Ms. Sheinfeld created a law curriculum for elementary and middle school students, and has been teaching weekly since that time. She also pioneered the expansion of this law program to a middle school in the Bronx.
Ms. Sheinfeld graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Brown University and cum laude from New York University School of Law.
