Office of the City Solicitor
SHELLEY R. SMITH
CITY SOLICITOR
Shelley R. Smith returns to the Law Department as City Solicitor after two years in private practice. Most recently, Ms. Smith was Associate General Counsel for Regulatory Affairs - East at Exelon Corporation. Before joining Exelon, Ms. Smith was of counsel in the Labor, Employment & Immigration Group at the law firm of Ballard, Spahr, Andrews, & Ingersoll from 2005-07, where her clients included the City of Philadelphia, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and the Philadelphia Orchestra, whose most recent contract negotiations she oversaw.
Ms. Smith spent 13 years in the City's Law Department. She began her career here after serving as a senior law clerk to The Honorable Robert N.C. Nix, Jr., Chief Justice of Pennsylvania, and during her tenure she spent more than a decade in the Law Department's Litigation Group, where she was a trial attorney and supervisor in the Civil Rights Unit, Chief of the Affirmative Litigation Unit, and Chief of the Labor and Employment Unit. She was Chair of the Law Department's Corporate and Tax Group when she left the office in 2005.
While with the City of Philadelphia, Ms. Smith tried nearly sixty federal civil rights matters to verdict, and litigated hundreds more. Some of her more significant matters include the 39th Police District litigation, NAACP v. City of Philadelphia and the jury trials of Joseph Frazier v. City of Philadelphia, Estate of Shannon Schieber v. City of Philadelphia, and Robert Mitchell v. Mayor John F. Street. She also coordinated the Mayor's efforts in the negotiation of collective bargaining agreements for Philadelphia Orchestra musicians and served as in-house legal counsel for former Philadelphia Police Commissioner Richard Neal.
In 2007, Ms. Smith was named a "Minority Attorney on the Verge" by Pennsylvania Law Weekly and The Legal Intelligencer, an honor given to minority attorneys who have risen to prominence and are on the verge of even greater accomplishments. She was named a Philadelphia SuperLawyer by Philadelphia Magazine in 2005.
Ms. Smith is admitted to practice in Pennsylvania. She is immediate past chair of the Philadelphia Bar Association's Judicial Selection and Retention Commission and is a member of the Editorial Board for the "Philadelphia Lawyer" magazine. She is also a member of the Southeastern Pennsylvania Advisory Board of Pennsylvanians for Modern Courts.
Ms. Smith is a graduate of Temple University (B.A. 1985) and Villanova University School of Law (J.D. 1989).
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