• A former colleague of chief justice john roberts wife.
• In a letter to the Justice Department.
• The spreadsheets show a six-figure payment attached to Mrs. Roberts.

Chief justice John Robert’s wife, Jane Sullivan Roberts, left her career as a Biglaw partner at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman when her husband, John Roberts, was appointed to the Supreme Court. 

She said in an interview that John’s job made it “awkward to be practicing law in the firm.” This controversial news was published by the New York Times on Feb 1st, 2023.

A former colleague of chief justice John Roberts’ wife, Kendal Price, who previously worked with Jane Sullivan Roberts at Major, Africa, and Lindsey, sent a letter to the Justice Department and House and Senate Judiciary Committee leaders. 

He alleged the chief justice may have violated recusal and financial disclosure rules for judges. He wrote, “I do believe that litigants in U.S. courts, and especially the Supreme Court, deserve to know if their judges’ households are receiving six-figure payments from the law firms.”

Kendal Price, a 66 years old Boston lawyer, and Jane Sullivan Roberts, 50 years old chef justice wife, worked together as legal recruiters for Major, Lindsey, and Africa, an international firm based in Maryland. 

According to the Price letter, They and another executive sued the firm for being fired in 2013. In a letter to the Justice Department, he attached spreadsheets that show that Jane received commissions in her early career, from 2007 to 2014.

According to her, a 2015 deposition in the case said that a particular portion of her job was devoted to helping senior government lawyers get jobs at law firms. “I keep my placement confidential,” Mrs. Roberts said in the deposition.

The spreadsheets show six-figure payments attached to Mrs. Roberts for placing candidates at law firms, including $690,000 in 2012 for one particular match. 

The documents do not have name clients, but Mr. Price recalled her recruitment of one confirmed candidate, Ken Salazar, then interior secretary under President Barack Obama, to WilmerHale. This global firm has argued more than 125 times before the Supreme Court.

Chief Justices are mainly largely self-policing and must make yearly disclosures about their finances, including the source of the wife’s income, only the date, and the type but not the amount.

In John Robert’s yearly disclosure, the chief justice, who has never recused himself from a case because of his wife’s work, listed her employers but not the names of her clients or earnings.

About Jane Roberts

In 1996, Jane and John Roberts tied the knot after having reconnected after their initial meeting. 

Their connection had been strong right from the start, and they even managed to remember what each of them had been wearing during that fateful encounter. 

Soon after, Sullivan Roberts began her career in law at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman. In 2019, she was commissioned by legal Group to head their expansion into the capital. 

Prior to this commission, she was instrumental as a recruiter for Major Lindsay and Africa; one of the city’s largest legal recruitment agencies. To top it off, Sullivan Roberts is also an alumnus of the College of The Holy Cross, where she currently serves on their Board Of Trustees.

Jane Roberts is a highly experienced legal professional who has held diverse roles. Before she joined MLA, Ms. Roberts was the Executive Partner for Talent Development at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman. 

Prior to that role, she had been a partner in the company’s Global Technology Group, concentrating on IT sourcing and satellite system procurement. 

In addition, Ms. Roberts practiced litigation with Shaw Pittman and Dorsey & Whitney and handled cases before diverse courts. In 1992, Jane completed litigation before the Australian courts with the help of Arthur Robinson & Hedderwicks. 

Furthermore, Jane served as a law clerk for Honorable James M. Sprouse of the Fourth Circuit Federal Court of Appeals during the 1984–1985 term. This impressive history demonstrates her excellent qualifications and competence in the field of law.

Prior to embarking on her legal career, she developed a wealth of professional experience across industries, working as a systems engineer at Bell Laboratories and teaching mathematics at both the high school and college levels. 

This impressive background reflects the breadth of her expertise, regularly drawing on her knowledge of science and mathematics for legal insights. 

Her ties to Ireland were strong, too; she and her husband came from Irish families, with ownership of a cottage in Knocklong, County Limerick, close to her mother’s home in Charleville near the boundaries between Counties Limerick and Cork.