Toby Merrill most recently served as the Biden-Harris administration’s Principal Deputy General Counsel and previously Deputy General Counsel for Postsecondary Education for the Department of Education between 2021 and 2025. In those roles, Toby provided advice on programmatic issues related to the Department’s postsecondary work and led the team of lawyers who advised on these issues, including student loan repayment policies, debt relief actions, Public Service Loan Forgiveness, institutional accountability and enforcement, student loan servicing and collection, bankruptcy, and borrower defense. She worked closely with the Department of Justice on litigation challenging some of the administration’s top higher education priorities.

Prior to Toby’s federal service, she founded and directed the Project on Predatory Student Lending, where she represented student loan borrowers cheated by predatory colleges in high-impact litigation across the country. The organization began as Toby’s Skadden Fellowship project at the Legal Services Center of Harvard Law School, where she taught the predatory lending and consumer protection clinic and a class on student loan law. Toby twice represented legal aid providers and their clients in the Department of Education’s negotiated rulemaking process. She also served on the Massachusetts Division of Professional Licensure’s advisory board on private occupational schools. Toby clerked in the District of Connecticut, and graduated from Harvard Law School, cum laude, and Yale College.

Toby has collaborated with Jacobson Lawyers Group since its founding.