Bio
Professor Jon Sylvester has been a full time legal educator for more than 30 years, teaching Contracts and other commercial law courses at Golden Gate University School of Law, Loyola Law School of Los Angeles, the Thurgood Marshal School of Law at Texas Southern University, the University of San Francisco School of Law, the Law Faculty of the University of Nairobi in Kenya, and the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing. Professor Sylvester has taught in and/or directed legal education programs in China, Costa Rica, Indonesia, Kenya, Malta, Panama and Turkey, and has traveled to more than 50 countries. He has taught Contracts at UC Law SF intermittently since 2000.
Professor Sylvester earned his undergraduate degree at Stanford University and a master’s degree in journalism from the University of California at Berkeley. He worked as a television news writer, producer and reporter before earning a J.D. at Harvard Law School. He then practiced law with the Washington, D.C. offices of two New York firms. He has been a member of the California Bar since 1981, and the District of Columbia Bar since 1982.
Also a commercial arbitrator since 1995, Professor Sylvester has handled cases involving real estate (sales, development, leases, CAM fees, etc.); partnership agreements and dissolution; franchise agreements; insurance; banking, securities, lending and credit, and other financial matters; professional services fee disputes; intellectual property; high technology; construction; executive employment and compensation; health care (medical malpractice, MICRA, HMO contracts, insurance and subrogation issues, etc.); international business transactions and a variety of other claims. As a certified Arbitrator for the California State Bar and Alameda County Bar Association fee dispute resolution programs, he has arbitrated fee disputes including both litigation and transactional matters in commercial law, real property, family law, and tort.