Carl Jones

Carl E. Jones Jr. is an attorney with an uncommon breadth of skills and experience that go well beyond his practice of law: he has been elected president four times, is proficient in Kiswahili and his work may even someday help humans travel to Mars. (More later.)

Jones joined Kline & Specter in 2008 after practicing with the Pittsburgh office of Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Preston Gates Ellis LLP, a firm with 1,500 attorneys and offices in two dozen cities. While with that worldwide firm he worked on cases involving mass torts, product liability, insurance coverage, commercial litigation and antitrust and unfair competition issues.

Jones was selected for inclusion in Pennsylvania Super Lawyers — Rising Stars, a publication that named the top 2.5 percent of attorneys in the state 40 or younger. In 2012, he was also named as a member of The National Trial Lawyers: Top 40 Under 40.

In late 2010, Jones helped win a $27.6 million jury verdict for a Philadelphia couple arising from the negligence of a medical device manufacturer and a public relations company. The defendants had placed Margo Polett on an exercise bicycle for a promotional video following knee surgery, resulting in a catastrophic injury. (Read news coverage)

Earlier, Jones was co-counsel in litigation that produced a rare verdict against the Philadelphia Police Department for the family of a man who was arrested and later died in a police van due to mechanical asphyxiation caused by a malfunctioning seat belt. Police claimed immunity under state law, but plaintiffs argued successfully that the van should not have been used and the officers’ failed in their duty to protect the man from injury while he was in their custody. A jury agreed and delivered a verdict for the city to pay $241,301 in damages.

Before practicing law, Jones compiled a list of academic accomplishments that were notable for their number and variety.

A native of Georgia, Jones was valedictorian of his graduating class at Cedar Grove High School in Ellenwood, Ga. He went on to Cornell University, where he graduated with honors with a degree in Africana Studies and Research and History, developing a proficiency in Kiswahili (the Swahili word for the Swahili language).

He won a number of honors at Cornell, including being named the Cornell Meining Family National Scholar, the Cornell College of Arts and Sciences Excellence in Leadership and Service Award, the Cornell University Black Students United Senior Award, the Cornell University Baccalaureate Service Award and receiving the Cornell NCAA Collegiate Intern Scholarship.

While at Cornell, Jones was also president (1) of the Quill and Dagger, the school’s senior honor society, chapter president (2) of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, and later became the Class of 2003 president (3) for the Cornell University Alumni association.

Jones didn’t sit around on summer breaks, either. In 2001, for instance, he did research on the connection between the “media preoptic area and the suprachiasmatic nucleus” for use in the study of the NASA initiative to send a human to Mars.

He attended the University of Georgia School of Law, where he was elected class president (4) for his first year, 2006. Jones was a member and later an executive of the university’s moot court program. He won an Oralist Award at the American Bar Association Moot Court Tournament in 2004-5. He coached the 2005-6 ABA team and was a member of the team that won the 2005-6 Thurgood Marshall Mock Trial National Competition. In May 2011, Jones graduated from the LL.M. Program in Trial Advocacy at Temple University’s Beasley School of Law.

Jones is a member of the American Bar Association, Pennsylvania Bar Association, American Association for Justice, Philadelphia Bar Association, Pennsylvania Association for Justice, the Philadelphia Trial Lawyers Association and the Allegheny County Bar Association.

To contact Carl Jones, email him at

News Featuring Carl Jones:

• Hoffman, Jones win $1.2M verdict in baby death case, The Legal Intelligencer 112009