Joseph Steinfield was born and raised in Claremont, New Hampshire. He spent the first 38 years of his legal career at Hill & Barlow in Boston. After that firm dissolved in 2002, he joined Prince Lobel Tye in Boston. He has been a full-time New Hampshire resident since 2014 and maintains an office at 130 Court Street in Keene.
Joe has won many multi-million dollar jury verdicts on behalf of his clients, and he has tried virtually every type of lawsuit, in state and federal courts in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Puerto Rico and elsewhere. He has argued many appeals, including landmark cases in the highest courts of Massachusetts and New Hampshire and in the First and Second Circuits.
Joe has been listed in The Best Lawyers in America since the inception of that publication more than 30 years ago and is cited in its most recent 2024 edition in three categories – “’Bet the Company’ litigation,” Commercial Litigation, and “Litigation – First Amendment.”
Joe served as Law Clerk to Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Justice Paul C. Reardon.
Involvement in Bar and Community Activities
During his career, Joe has been active in many legal and community organizations, including the following:
- In 2021, he founded a monthly speaker series called “Stories to Share,” which presents guest speakers at the Jaffrey, N.H. Civic Center, during the fall, winter, and spring. Information regarding the 2024-2025 season, with a link to the first three seasons, is available at https://jaffreyciviccenter.com/stories/. From modest beginnings, the series has developed a large following in the Monadnock region. Joe serves as moderator and, on December 6, 2024, will engage in a “Conversation” with Ophelia Dahl, co-founder of Partners in Health.
- In March 2024, Joe chaired a New Hampshire Bar Association CLE program entitled “Motion Practice.” On February, 6, 2025, he will chair “Appellate Practice and Advocacy in New Hampshire.”
- Governor Deval Patrick appointed him to the City of Boston Finance Commission, a watchdog agency that monitors expenditures by the City.
- The Chief Justice of the Trial Court appointed him to the Massachusetts Commission on Judicial Conduct, which he chaired for two years.
- The Chief Justice of Massachusetts appointed him to the Massachusetts Clients’ Security Board, and as the Board’s Chair he presided over hearings involving a lawyer’s theft of over $17 million from his clients.
- Governor Michael Dukakis appointed him as a trustee of Roxbury Community College.
- Governor Francis Sargent appointed him as Chair of the Massachusetts Drug Program Review Board.
- He is the Founder and former Chair of the Law Clerks’ Society of the Supreme Judicial Court.
- He served as a member of the New Hampshire Bar Association Board of Governors from 2018 to 2021.
- Joe has been a member of many civic and professional boards, including Celebrity Series of Boston, Partners for Youth With Disabilities, Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts, and the Colonial Theatre in Keene, NH.
Teaching, Speaking and Writing Activities
- Joe has been an adjunct professor of law at both Boston College Law School and the University of New Hampshire Law School. He is currently a member of the CALL (Cheshire Academy for Lifelong Learning) faculty in Keene, where he teaches courses on constitutional law. His Fall 2023 course was entitled “Sex, Religion, and the Supreme Court.” In 2025 he will teach “Democracy and the Supreme Court.”
- He has taught courses on constitutional law, freedom of speech and press, mediation and negotiation, and American jury trials at several foreign universities – Adyghe State University in the Russian Republic of Adygheya (2008); Herzen State Pedagogical University in St. Petersburg (2011); the University of Ljubljana (Slovenia) Faculty of Law (2016); and the University of Iceland (2016 and 2019).
- During the years 2021-2024, Joe served as Chair of the American College of Trial Lawyers (ACTL) “Teaching Abroad Committee,” which provides advocacy training for trial lawyers and law students in foreign countries. In April 2024, he led a week-long trial advocacy workshop in Pretoria, South Africa.
- He has been a guest lecturer on the subjects of alternative dispute resolution, trial advocacy, freedom of speech, and other legal topics at many continuing legal education programs and at colleges, universities, and libraries, including University of New Hampshire Law School, Franklin Pierce University, Harvard Law School, Northeastern University, Boston University, Idaho State, and the University of Nevada Law School. In November 2016 and 2018 he was a guest speaker at the Redwood Library and Athenaeum in Newport, Rhode Island.
- He has published over 300 articles in journals and newspapers, including the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript, Keene Sentinel, and Concord Monitor.
- He has organized and chaired conferences at several universities, including Northeastern University, Suffolk Law School, University of Hawaii, and Boston University. In 2009 he organized and chaired a symposium entitled “Terrorism, Media and the Law,” held at the Diplomatic Academy in Vienna.
- In May 2014 his collected essays were published under the title Claremont Boy: My New Hampshire Roots and the Gift of Memory (Bauhan Publishing). His second book, Time for Everything: My Curious Life, was published in August 2022.
- Joe has been a guest on many radio and television programs, including “Greater Boston” (WGBH Channel 2), CNN, New York Public Television’s “Digital Age” (you can watch him on “Digital Age: A Case from Nowhere”) and WHMP Northampton (you can hear him on “A Sense of Place”).
