Hear Jeff argue in the U. S. Supreme Court on November 28, 2000, in the case of City News and Novelty, Inc., v. City of Waukesha, 531 U. S. 278 (2001).

 

                    Jeff Scott Olson was born in Augusta, Wisconsin, a small farming community.  He came to Madison to attend the University of Wisconsin, graduated with honors in 1972, and obtained his law degree in 1976.  In over twenty years of private practice, he has almost always represented individuals or small businesses against government agencies, corporations and insurance companies.  Over these years, he has won a number of landmark cases, including Watkins v. LIRC, which established the right of an employment discrimination victim to recover a separate award of attorneys' fees under the Wisconsin Fair Employment Act, and Gilbert v. State of Wisconsin Medical Examining Board, which established due process safeguards applicable to professional license revocation cases.
                    Jeff Olson has earned the respect of other trial lawyers and the trust of his clients.  A nationally recognized expert on civil rights law, he has been asked on nearly fifty occasions to present educational programs for the training of other lawyers, and has authored more than a dozen articles on civil rights topics in national publications.   He was the winner of the American Civil Liberties Union's "Volunteer Attorney of the Year" award in 1986 and , along with Percy L. Julian, Jr., the Dane County Fair Housing Council's "Fair Housing Advocate Award in 1988.  Along with Michael R. Fox, he was voted "Best Civil Rights Lawyer in Madison" in a poll of the Dane County Bar published in Madison Magazine's January, 1994, edition.  He is listed in The Best Lawyers in America and Who's Who in American Law, and is a past chair of the State Bar of Wisconsin Individual Rights Section. 
                    He is a member of the American Trial Lawyers' Association, the National Employment Lawyers' Association, the Wisconsin Academy of Trial Lawyers, the First Amendment Lawyers' Association, the State Bar of Wisconsin and the Dane County Criminal Defense Lawyers' Association.