Deborah T. Portiz to hold office at Drinker Biddle & Reath
Deborah T. Poritz, who retired as chief justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court in October, will be joining the Plainsboro office of the law firm Drinker Biddle & Reath, the firm announced Monday.
A Princeton resident, she was appointed to the state high court by Gov. Christine Todd Whitman in 1996. She was Gov. Whitman’s attorney general at the time.
Chief Justice Poritz was the first female chief justice and the first female attorney general in New Jersey. She also served in the administration of Gov. Thomas H. Kean as his chief counsel.
A Drinker Biddle news release stated: "The former Chief Justice is joining Drinker Biddle in part because of her longstanding relationships with members of the firm and because of the firm’s capacity to support a practice that will focus on corporate and government investigations along with mediation and arbitration."
The release noted that she will rejoin former colleague Ross A. Lewin, a litigator who joined Drinker Biddle in September 2006. Mr. Lewin worked with Chief Justice Poritz while at the state Attorney General’s Office, in Gov. Kean’s administration and in private practice.
"I’ve always had a great respect for the lawyers of Drinker Biddle, and I look forward to working with them," stated the former chief justice.
The field of law was a second career for Chief Justice Poritz, who chose to attend University of Pennsylvania Law School in the late 1970s. A graduate of Brooklyn College who also studied literature at Columbia University, she had previously taught writing and American literature at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pa., near Philadelphia.

