Duane Jones grew up in Queens, New York. In the seventh grade, he was recruited to be one of the first African-American students to attend Middlesex School, a preparatory school in Massachusetts. He won debating prizes and decided to make the law his career. He graduated near the top of his class and went on to Harvard University, where he was appointed one of the first students ever to hold a seat on the Committee on Undergraduate Curriculum in his major. He received a magna cum laude on his senior thesis there, and went on to law school at Berkeley Law, the University of California, where he became a teaching fellow in his second year, a paid faculty member tutoring first year students in Tort law.