Lori Outzs Borgen has served as the Director of the Center for Social Justice since 2020. She coordinates the Center’s clinics and its Pro Bono Service Program. Her research and practice interests are in the areas of housing, voting rights, and poverty law.

Professor Borgen currently teaches Social Justice Lawyering and Residential Landlord-Tenant Law.  She previously taught and directed the Deposition Skills course as well as the intensive Persuasion and Advocacy winter session.  From 2018-2022, she taught the Government and Non-Profit Externship course and served as Director of the Law School Externship Program.

The core of Professor Borgen’s work is within the Center’s experiential programs. She developed the Housing Justice Project that launched in fall 2021 as well as pro bono opportunities with the Edna Mahan Class Action Settlement Project and the Name Change Project.  She co-taught the Reentry Legal Assistance Clinic in 2018, where students assisted community members with expungements, driver’s license restoration, and child support modifications. During the 2004-05 academic year, Professor Borgen directed the Housing and Homelessness Clinic. She supervised students in various housing and public assistance matters, including landlord-tenant disputes and federal housing rights. 

From 2008-2020, Professor Borgen served as Associate Director of the Center for Social Justice as well as a National Institute for Trial Advocacy (NITA) Program Director of the NITA New Jersey Deposition Skills course. In 2008, she was the Acting Director of the Skills Curriculum at Seton Hall, in which capacity she supervised skills courses as well as the moot court program.

In 2023, Professor Borgen received the Seton Hall University faculty award for Excellence in Service-Learning for exceptional leadership and development in service-learning.

Professor Borgen was appointed to serve on the New Jersey Judiciary Group on Tax Foreclosures beginning in August 2023.  In addition, she served on the NJSBA Pro Bono Committee for several years, including service as the Co-Chair from 2020-22. In June 2020, NJSBA President Kim Yonta appointed her to serve on the Access to Justice Committee of the NJSBA Coronavirus Task Force. From 2006-2018, she was a Trustee of Volunteer Lawyers for Justice, based in Newark, New Jersey, and served as Secretary of the Board for two years.

Professor Borgen has worked on housing and other public interest litigation and policy work throughout her career. She litigated landlord-tenant and other housing issues with Brooklyn Legal Services, Corp. B. She then served as a Gibbons Fellow in Public Interest and Constitutional Law at Gibbons P.C. (then known as Gibbons, Del Deo, Dolan, Griffinger and Vecchione, P.C.) in Newark, New Jersey, where she engaged in impact litigation on welfare reform, racial profiling by New Jersey police, domestic violence, and government-subsidized housing. While engaged in a full-time practice at Gibbons, she taught a course on low-income housing and community development at Seton Hall Law. After her Gibbons Fellowship concluded, Professor Borgen worked as the senior staff attorney with the Voting Rights Project of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law in Washington, D.C. She represented the NAACP and individual clients in litigation following the 2000 general election regarding problems that resulted in the denial of the right to vote in Florida for the presidential election. She also represented a class of formerly incarcerated individuals with felony convictions in Florida seeking to have their voting rights restored. In addition, Professor Borgen helped to establish the Election Protection coalition and participated in community education on voting rights and redistricting.

Professor Borgen received her J.D. from Columbia Law School and her B.A., with honors, from Harvard College. She clerked for the Honorable Joseph E. Irenas in the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey.