Jeffrey Dillman

1963 - 2022

Jeffrey Dillman
October 22, 1963 - January 22, 2022
Durham, North Carolina - Jeffrey Duane Dillman, age 58, died in his sleep in Durham, North Carolina, on January 22, 2022. He was born on October 22, 1963, in Columbus, Ohio, to Arline Ann Speelman and the late Duane Harmon Dillman.
Jeff is survived and will be missed forever by his spouse Frances Susan Hasso, his mother Arline S. Dillman, his sister Lisa Michele Dillman, his children Jamal Laith Dillman-Hasso and Naseem Hadi Dillman-Hasso, and many friends and relatives. Jeff was known for his wit, kindness, and commitment to social justice. He was a devoted baba to Jamal and Naseem and life partner and comrade to Frances.
Jeff graduated from Carthay Center Elementary School, John Burroughs Junior H.S., and Fairfax H.S. (1981) in Los Angeles. He earned a B.A. from UCLA (1986, summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa) and a Juris Doctor from Berkeley Law (1989). He was most recently the Managing Attorney and Co-Director of the Fair Housing Project of Legal Aid of North Carolina (2012-2022).
Jeff began his career in Washington, D.C., as an Associate Legal Counselor for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in the U.S. Branch Office and was Acting Legal Counselor during supervisor missions (1989-1991). He worked as a Visiting Researcher for the Palestine Human Rights Information Center in Jerusalem, Palestine (1991-1992), where among other things he authored (with Musa A. Bakri) the report, Israel's Use of Electric Shock Torture in the Interrogation of Palestinian Detainees (1992). In Michigan, Jeff was Supervising Attorney of the Asylum and Refugee Law Project & Haitian Refugee Law Project at the University of Michigan Law School (1992-1998) and Adjunct Lecturer in Law at the Law School (1996-1997). As an attorney-at-law, he worked with Deb LaBelle representing women prisoners in civil rights cases, as well as indigents in criminal appeals as a roster attorney on the Michigan Appellate Assigned Counsel System (1992-1998). He co-authored the respondents' brief before the U.S. Supreme Court in Martin v. Hadix (1999). In Ohio, Jeff was Visiting Assistant Professor in the Law Clinic at the University of Dayton School of Law, representing indigent clients in housing, family law, and juvenile misdemeanor cases (1999-2000). He was Staff Attorney for The Housing Advocates, Inc., in Cleveland (2000-2002), work that included writing an amicus brief on behalf of eight organizations to the Ohio Supreme Court in Smith v. Friendship Village of Dublin (2001). As Visiting Assistant Professor of Law and then Associate Professor of Law at the Milton A. Kramer Law Clinic Center at Case Western Reserve University School of Law (2002-2005), he worked on consumer law cases in predatory lending and home repair fraud. Between 2005 and 2011, Jeff was Executive Director of the Housing Research & Advocacy Center in Cleveland.
Jeff was licensed to practice law in the State of North Carolina (2012-2022) and the State of Ohio (2000-2013), a member of the State Bar of California (1990-2022), and a former member of the State Bar of Michigan (1993-2009).
In lieu of flowers, memorial donations honoring Jeff's life and interests may be made to any of the following organizations, whose work he regularly supported: The Rosenberg Fund for Children (https://www.rfc.org/); Resist (https://resist.org/); and Black Mamas Bailout Action by Southerners on New Ground (https://southernersonnewground.org/our-work/freefromfear/black-mamas-bail-out-action/).
A memorial service and reception for family, friends and colleagues to celebrate Jeff's life will be held outdoors at the North Carolina Botanical Garden in Chapel Hill, NC, on March 20th, 2022 at 11 a.m. If you would like more information, please send an email to jeffdillmanmemorial@gmail.com.