Jason R. Bent
Direct: (312) 546-6139
Fax: (888) 664-8172
Email: jbent@smithandbent.com

Jason Bent is of counsel to the firm, and is serving as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Law at Penn State University, Dickinson School of Law, for the 2010-2011 academic year.

While in private practice, Mr. Bent's litigation experience included defending an employer against a novel class action brought by the United States EEOC alleging a "pattern or practice" of sexual harassment in the workplace.  Mr. Bent has represented a number of employers against discrimination claims before the EEOC, the Illinois Department of Human Rights, and in federal and state courts.  Mr. Bent has also represented an employer in connection with a Department of Labor audit of the employer's wage and overtime payment practices under the Fair Labor Standards Act.

Mr. Bent received his J.D., magna cum laude, from the University of Michigan Law School (2000), where he was elected to the Order of the Coif. He also served as Notes Editor of the Michigan Law Review.  Mr. Bent earned his B.A. in Economics with honors from Grinnell College (1997).

Mr. Bent served as a law clerk to the Hon. Judge Cornelia Kennedy in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and for the Hon. Judge Joan B. Gottschall in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.  Prior to forming Smith & Bent, Mr. Bent was an associate at Foley & Lardner, LLP.

Mr. Bent is the author of The Telltale Sign of Discrimination: Probabilities, Information Asymmetries, and the Systemic Disparate Treatment Theory, forthcoming in the Michigan Journal of Law Reform (2010), Systemic Harassment, 77 Tennessee Law Review 151 (2009); What the Lilly Ledbetter Act Doesn’t Do: “Discrete Acts” and the Future of Pattern or Practice Litigation, 33 Rutgers Law Record 31 (2009); and Sentencing Equality for Deportable Aliens, 98 Michigan Law Review 1320 (2000), among other publications.

Mr. Bent serves on the Editorial Board of The ABA Journal of Labor & Employment Law, and frequently speaks on employment law issues.  Mr. Bent is admitted to practice in the states of Illinois and Wisconsin, and before the Northern District of Illinois, the Eastern District of Wisconsin, and the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Sixth and Seventh Circuits.

Michael D. Smith>>