Elisabeth Haub School of Law Alumni Magazine 2016

Pace Law ALUMNI MAGAZINE/SPRING 2016

40 Years, 174 Professors, 3,200 Classes, 8,620 Alumni, and One New Name

PRESIDENT OF PACE UNIVERSITY

EDITOR

DESIGN

Stephen J. Friedman

Joan Gaylord

DEAN OF PACE LAW

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

Tom Carling, Carling Design, Inc.

David Yassky

Joan Gaylord Jessica Dubuss Rana Abihabib Drew Gamils Samantha Hazen Brieanne Scully

ASSISTANT DEAN OF COMMUNICATIONS

Elizabeth Rapuano ASSISTANT DIRECTOR OF DEVELOPMENT AND ALUMNI RELATIONS

PHOTOGRAPHY

Joan Gaylord PRINTING

Lane Press

The Pace Law Alumni Magazine is published annually under the auspices of the Dean, and is distributed free of charge to alumni and friends of Pace Law. ADDRESS CORRESPONDENCE TO:

Development and Alumni Relations 78 North Broadway White Plains, NY 10603 914-422-4142 plsalumni@law.pace.edu

Yanira Amadeo This paper is manufactured using Green-e certified renewable energy.

Pace is committed to a sustainable campus. See our sustainability policy at www.law.pace.edu/sustainability

Opinions expressed on these pages do not necessarily reflect those of the magazine staff or of individuals enrolled at or employed by Pace University or of Pace University itself. Pace University admits, and will continue to admit, students of any sex, disability, race, sexual orientation, color, national and ethnic origin to all rights, privileges, programs, and activities generally accorded or made available to students at the School. It does not, and will not, discriminate on the basis of sex, age, disability, race, sexual orientation, color, national and ethnic origin in the administration of its educational policies, admissions policies, scholarships and loan programs, and athletic and other school-administered programs.

Š Copyright 2016 by Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University

Pace Law ALUMNI MAGAZINE/SPRING 2016

Message from the Dean

2

OF NOTE

8

4

Haub Award Salutes Historic Environmental Achievement Magna Carta: Enduring Legacy Semester-in-Practice A Watershed Year—30 Years in the Making New Concentrations Mentors for Minority Students

4 8 11 13 15 16

STUDENT PROFILES

• Tyson-Lord J. Gray • Erica Danielsen • Sarah Lusk • Paul Alvarez

7 10 14 17

F E AT U R E 40 Years of Educating Lawyers

18

F A C U LT Y Feminist Judgments: A Conversation with Professor Crawford No Bitin’ Allowed A Hip-Hop Copying Paradigm Pace Law Faculty Publications Retirees

26 30 31 33

FA C U LT Y P R O F I L E S

30

18

• Professor Bennett Gershman • Professor Margot Pollans

27 29

ALUMNI Alumni Events Class Notes In Memoriam

34 36 42

ALUMNI PROFILES

• Malachy E. Mannion • Judith Lockhart • John Cahill • Penelope Barnett • Caesar Lopez

37 39 40 44 46

34

SPRING 2016

1

MESSAGE FROM THE DEAN

Building on Our Strengths The Haub gift is both a mandate for the future and a tribute to the people who built this school, from the ground up, over the past 40 years.

WE STAND AT A TRULY HISTORIC MOMENT for our Law School.

As we celebrate the 40th anniversary of Pace Law opening its doors, we are also excited to open a new chapter.

As you probably know, this spring we cemented our long-standing partnership with a wonderful philanthropic family who believe strongly in our mission. This partnership brings an infusion of resources that will take our Environmental Law Program, and the entire Law School, to new heights. In recognition of the gift and our partnership with the family, we are adding their name to ours—the Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University.

At a time when many law schools are retrenching, this gift propels our school forward. In addition to providing the school with a general endowment (something we have never had before) the gift will fund specific initiatives in the school’s Environmental Law Program, currently ranked third in the nation. These include: • the Haub Scholars program, providing reduced tuition to a select group of the most highly-qualified and promising environmental law students. The program will enable them to study or attend conferences abroad, ensuring that the Haub Scholars have a truly global experience • a Chair in Environmental Law, a Chair in Public International Law

and an annual Visiting Scholar in a related field • “venture capital” for innovative teaching initiatives such as online

courses At Pace, we have always known that a great legal education must teach more than statutes, regulations and case law. Students must also gain concrete practice skills, and begin to learn the strategies and tactics of representation: How do I help a client decide whether to mediate or go to trial? How does a plea deal actually work in practice? What happens during a re-zoning process and what forces are at play?

2

PA C E L AW A L U M N I M A G A Z I N E

As legal practice becomes ever more specialized, ever more complex and ever more competitive, our distinctive approach is more important than ever.

We are building on our historic strengths by expanding our clinics and fieldplacement programs, and by supplementing our extraordinary faculty with world-class practicing attorneys. The result is a “Path to Practice” curriculum that truly prepares our graduates to deliver value to firms and clients.

In this moment of looking forward, I want also to pause and reflect on how far our Law School has come. The Haub gift is both a mandate for the future and a tribute to the people who built this school, from the ground up, over the past 40 years. The credit, of course, must start with our extraordinary faculty, including Nick Robinson, who founded the Environmental Law Program that has done so much to enhance our stature. In the following pages, you will read about other of my colleagues, including Ben Gershman, who in this anniversary year is an original member of the founding faculty; Michael Mushlin, whose advocacy for prison reform is making a profound difference in New York State and across the country; and Bridget Crawford, whose path breaking work on feminist jurisprudence encourages students to look at landmark legal decisions in a different light.

Most of all, the Haub investment is a recognition of the work that you—our alumni—have done. In a sense, the message of a major gift to an educational institution is: “We admire and respect the accomplishments of your graduates, and we’d like to see much more of it!” I can understand why the donors would feel that way. You will also read about some exemplary alumni in the following pages—and “exemplary” is truly the right word, for there are so many more.

As we reach our maturity as a law school, our alumni community is 8,000 strong. You are partners at many of the biggest firms and general counsel of major corporations. You are judges and leaders in government.

You are attorneys who do the crucial work of assisting clients with difficult and important problems, day-in and day-out. We are enormously proud of the work that you do across every legal field. As we begin this new era, we look forward to continuing to grow, with you, in the years ahead.

David Yassky Dean, Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University

SPRING 2016

3

OF NOTE Haub Award Salutes Historic PACE LAW and the International Council of Environmental Law (ICEL) bestowed the Elisabeth Haub Award for Environmental Diplomacy upon H.E. Macharia Kamau, of Kenya, and H.E. Csaba Korosi, of Hungary. At a ceremony attended by United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, the diplomats were praised for their tireless efforts in leading the groundbreaking negotiations that produced the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals. For the first time in history, more than half the goals address issues related to the environment.

“We gather to pay homage to a singular achievement of international cooperation,” said Professor Nicholas Robinson during his remarks. “The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals are a watershed in global policy making.”

First presented in 1998, the Haub Award recognizes the work of diplomats and international civil servants whose accomplishments advance the environmental goals of Elisabeth Haub.

Recipients are selected by a jury composed of representatives from Pace Law and ICEL.

 From the left, Dean David Yassky, Pace University Provost Uday Sukhatme, President Stephen Friedman, Board Chairman Mark Besca, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, Christian Haub, Liliane Haub, Zolt Hetesy representing H.E. Kórösi, H.E. Macharia Kamau, Professor Nicholas Robinson

4

PA C E L AW A L U M N I M A G A Z I N E

Environmental Achievement

 Members of the diplomatic community  Dean Yassky congratulates His Excellency Macharia Kamau, of Kenya.

attended the event

 The Haubs congratulate Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon

 Secretary General Ban Ki-moon praises the achievements of the recipients

SPRING 2016

5

OF NOTE Who Was Elisabeth Haub?

THE SHORT ANSWER to that question is Elisabeth Haub was a woman ahead of her time—as a businesswoman and an environmentalist. Born in Germany at the turn of the 20th century, family stories tell of a young girl who resisted the usual prescribed roles for women and longed for opportunities to explore the wider world.

Political events provided her the opportunity. After withdrawing with her husband and son to a remote family farm during the war, Elisabeth emerged in the years after to lead the effort to rebuild the family business.

Started by her grandparents, the family company was left in ruins as a result of the war. Afterwards, Elisabeth stepped in to rebuild what is now known as Schmitz-Scholl/Tengelmann Group.

In the years that followed, her son Erivan built up the family company as West Germany rebuilt, while he pioneered company practices to protect the environment. Free to travel, Elisabeth and her husband visited many countries around the world where they observed the effects of industrial pollution and developed a keen awareness of environmental hazards, an issue few were focused on at that time.

In 1968, she created the Karl-Schmitz-Scholl-Fonds for Environmental Law and Policy, a tribute to her late father. The Foundation is tasked with advancing policies and legislation that will conserve the environment on an international scale. Building on this initiative, in 1974 she created the Elisabeth Haub Prize for Environmental Law awarded annually by the International Council of Environmental Law (ICEL).

After Elisabeth Haub’s death in 1977, her daughter-in-law assumed direction of the Foundation. By that time, Erivan Haub was the head of the family business that had now grown to be an international enterprise that embraced environmentally sustainable policies.

In memory of her mother-in-law and to carry on the work so important to Elisabeth, Helga Haub established the Elisabeth Haub Foundation for Environmental Law and Policy in the United States in 1982. She next partnered with ICEL and Pace University to establish the Elisabeth Haub Award for Environmental Diplomacy to laud those individuals who have advanced the cause of environmental law and policy.

6

PA C E L AW A L U M N I M A G A Z I N E

IN MEMORIAM

Jack McNeill

Pace Law mourns the loss of long-time Library Associate Director Jack McNeill after a courageous fight against cancer.

Before coming to Pace in July 2000, Jack worked at several academic law libraries and also engaged in the private practice of law for 10 years.

Everyone who knew Jack will attest to his sweet, gentle nature, his patience and his kindness. In every sense of the word, Jack was a gentleman.

TYSON-LORD J. GRAY has spent most of his adult life in academia. When he graduates from Pace Law in 2017, his JD will be his fourth graduate degree and his second doctorate—and he considers each a critical tool towards fulfilling his professional goals.

The first time he circled back to the classroom it wasn’t as a student but as a teacher. Immediately after college, T.L. spent three years teaching high school English. He left that post to pursue a Master’s of Divinity degree and has been a Baptist minister for 16 years. He views his calling to be a practical one focused on social ethics, so T.L. earned a Master’s of Philosophy degree from Boston University followed by a PhD in “Ethics and Society” from Vanderbilt where he focused on environmental ethics.

“It was an area where I found minority communities weren’t really engaged,” he explained. He realized, though, that the voice of these communities would be critical as the societal issues related to environmental ethics evolved and policies were set in place. “Minority communities are disproportionately affected by environmental risks and harms. The question is how are we going to take this information and translate it into real change?

This is an area that has a need for real, on-theground, tangible work.”

This is where T.L. sees himself contributing most effectively. He decided during his second year at Vanderbilt that a law degree would provide him with a vital credential, especially when his goals include shaping public policy. He preferred to be in the New York area and he wanted a law school with a strong environmental law department which made Pace an obvious choice. He says he visited the campus for an accepted students event and was sold.

Shortly after he enrolled, Professor Margot Pollans (see page 29) arrived at Pace Law and initiated the School’s new partnership with the National Resources Defense Council. T.L. had enrolled in her Environmental Skills class during which Professor Pollans encouraged him to pursue the newly created NRDC externship. T.L. applied and was chosen.

The semester-long externship has allowed him to work on several projects that are central to his focus of food justice, an area that T.L. defines as “access, and availability of healthy food options to all communities.” Also central to the field is the societal need to address public health issues such as obesity and diabetes that can occur when communities do not have ready access to healthy food. His externship at NRDC has involved him in discussions about the SNAP program, commonly known as “food stamps.” He is also serving as the point per-

STUDENT PROFILE

Tyson-Lord J. Gray , 2L

son for negotiations with Whole Foods, which has announced plans to open a store in Harlem. While it will expand the availability of nourishing food, T.L. is working to ensure the grocer’s plans truly benefit the community and not simply displace residents through gentrification.

Looking ahead to his 3L year, he hopes to participate in the Pro Bono Scholars program that allows select students to spend their sixth semester in supervised practice. Scholars sit for the bar exam in February of their third year, preparing them to practice almost immediately after graduation—an opportunity of enormous interest to T.L. “It would be great to have the practical experience under my belt and have the bar exam behind me so I can graduate and immediately move on to the next phase of my career. I want to hit the ground running.”

What are his plans for that next phase after graduation?

“I see myself doing exactly what I’m doing now. None of the steps I have taken has been extraneous. For example, the ministry portion is intrinsic to the very reason I do what I do. The Black church is still the citadel for policies and activism in the Black community.”

Activism lies at the core of his plans. While T.L.’s years in academia have developed his awareness of the challenges and issues communities face, he says it is not enough for him to simply discuss these problems. He needs to help change the problems.

How does his anticipated law degree figure into this plan?

“It gives me a perspective that is not typical for an activist. It equips me to speak with authority and not as an idealist.”

SPRING 2016

7

OF NOTE

Magna Carta:

Enduring Legacy 1215-2015 PACE LAW CELEBRATED the 800th anniversary of the sealing of Magna Carta by hosting “Magna Carta: Enduring Legacy 12152015,” an exhibit sponsored by the Law Library of Congress and the American Bar Association. During the two weeks in October that the exhibit graced the halls of the New York State Judicial Institute, the commemoration also included panel discussions, guest speakers and accompanying exhibits that illuminated the continuing relevance of the ancient document.

The Hon. Albert M. Rosenblatt, former associate judge for the New York Court of Appeals and president of The Historical Society of the New York Courts, delivered the keynote address, “Magna Carta: Alive and Well at 800.”

Pace Law Professor Nicholas Robinson, who spearheaded the event, spoke of “The Roots of Environmental Law in the Great Charter & Forest Charter.” Constitutional law professor Kermit Roosevelt III visited from Philadelphia and lectured on patriotism and politics and how they shape our policies. Professor Roosevelt is the author of the book “Allegiance,” a novel about the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. Westchester County Bar Association, New York State Bar Association and The Historical Society of the New York Courts co-sponsored the exhibit.

8

PA C E L AW A L U M N I M A G A Z I N E

 After his keynote address, Judge Rosenblatt continues the discussion during the reception

 Professor Jay Carlisle and Dean Yassky

 Professor Nick Robinson was active in bringing the exhibit to Pace Law

 The old and the new—Dean Ottinger uses his iPhone to photograph a reproduction of the ancient document

SPRING 2016

9

STUDENT PROFILE

OF NOTE

10

Erica Danielsen, 3L ERICA DANIELSEN KNOWS EXACTLY what she wants for her legal career and she has spent her three years at Pace bringing it all into focus. Since she first enrolled, Pace has allowed her the flexibility to find the classes, the professors, the clinics and the internships that have put her on track to fulfilling her goal of becoming a criminal defense attorney.

“Pace is what you make of it,” she says.

As Erica finishes her last semester, she can look back at an impressive record—in the top 10 percent of her class, she is a Pro Bono scholar, she sat for the February 2016 New York State bar exam, sat on Pace Law Review, participated in the Federal Judicial Honors program as a 2L and is past president of the Pace Criminal Justice Society. While working this past year as a research assistant for Professor Michael Mushlin on his efforts towards prison reform, Erica’s contributions caught the eye of former New York City Commissioner of Corrections, Martin Horn, who emailed Professor Mushlin to praise the quality of Erica’s work. To top it off, the Westchester Women’s Bar Foundation just awarded her their 2016 Justice Sondra Miller Scholarship.

“Pace opened the door for me to do what I want to do,” she says with a smile that conveys a mixture of gratitude and well-earned pride.

Like many students at Pace, Erica was the first in her family to attend college and the first to even think about going to law school. However, no one could say she followed a straight path towards achieving her goal. After high school in New Jersey, Erica first earned her associates degree before going away to a four-year college in Pennsylvania.

What followed was not her best year. A combination of a few bad choices, a little more partying than studying, and a disappointing academic transcript and Erica was soon back in New Jersey trying to decide how to make a life for herself and her infant son. However, that year marks the wakeup call that she admits she needed.

While working as a paralegal, caring for her child with help from her family and finishing her college degree, Erica developed the maturity and the focus that set her on a very different path.

She remembers that when she applied to law

PA C E L AW A L U M N I M A G A Z I N E

“I know that helping one client at a time deal with their criminal case changes that client’s life, but it is not going to change the system. I’ve come to see that there also needs to be people out there working as hard as they are to bring systemic change. It is important to have both.”  school, she wrote about her experiences and what she had learned from them. She feels that it was her essay that convinced admissions to give her a chance.

“I’ve always had the dream. Pace gave me the opportunity to realize my dream through determination and commitment.”

Erica says her professional goal is to help people, a goal she thinks she can best achieve by working in the field of criminal defense. Not waiting to graduate, she has taken advantage of the Pro Bono Scholars program and has spent her sixth semester taking cases under supervised student practice orders. She divides her time between the Pace Criminal Justice Clinic, where she handles mis-

SEMESTER-IN-PRACTICE:

Preparing Students To Be ‘Practice Ready’ demeanors, and Westchester Legal Aid, where the cases are felonies. In both settings, she draws upon a wisdom and sense of compassion that she knows she developed while finding her own path in life.

“You look at clients’ criminal records and you see felonies and misdemeanors. But there is a person behind this record. They are not just a piece of paper; there is a story there.

Everyone makes bad choices but that doesn’t mean they are bad people. If anything, even if they made bad choices, there are also families behind those choices whose lives are also affected.”

As Erica interacts with her clients, one person at a time, she draws satisfaction from seeing that her work is having an impact on peoples’ lives. But she has also come to realize the criminal justice system needs to be changed. Her work with Professor Michael Mushlin has opened her eyes to that fact.

As she has assisted him this past year with research regarding prisoners’ rights, solitary confinement, and a trip to Albany to advocate for prison oversight when Professor Mushlin testified before the Assembly Standing Committee on Correction, Erica says she has come to appreciate the enormous effort required to repair what many see as a broken prison system, the system in which her clients struggle.

“I know that helping one client at a time deal with their criminal case changes that client’s life, but it is not going to change the system. I’ve come to see that there also needs to be people out there working as hard as they are to bring systemic change. It is important to have both.”

While her experience in the clinic as well as her work with Professor Mushlin has allowed her to see and appreciate both sides of the effort, Erica is adamant which side she wants to pursue after graduation—criminal defense.

Where does she see herself in ten years?

“Criminal defense.”

As we went to press, Erica learned that she had passed the bar exam. Later that same day, Westchester Legal Aid offered her a fulltime position that she accepted.

THE NEWLY LAUNCHED Semester-in-Practice program provides yet another opportunity for Pace Law students to gain practical legal experience before they graduate. Open to qualified students, participants spend their sixth semester working fulltime at a law firm or government agency under the supervision of a practicing attorney.

In addition to their field placements, students also participate in a seminar under the direction of Professor Shelby Green. The weekly meetings, Professor Green says, are designed “to contextualize the students’ fieldwork experience within an academic framework.” Discussions focus on ethics, problem solving, and skills development. Students maintain a work log detailing the projects and assignments at their placements, as well as journals that reflect upon their professional experiences. During the semester, each student is also expected to complete a significant piece of legal writing.

In addition to the real-world experience, students receive two grades and 14 credits upon their successful completion of the Semester-in-Practice—12 clinical credits based upon input from their field supervisor and two classroom credits for their work in the seminar.

“The Semester-in-Practice has been a terrific addition to our ‘path to practice’ approach to legal education,” said Dean Yassky, a strong advocate of the new program. “We’ve always been known for our clinics and centers and they continue to provide our students with outstanding opportunities. Our Pro Bono Scholars program, launched two years ago, has also proven to be exceptional—our students rank among the best in the state. And with the addition of the Semester-in-Practice, we have expanded the opportunities available to our students to prepare them to be ‘practice ready’ as soon as they graduate.”

 Students participating in the program also gather for weekly seminars

SPRING 2016

11

OF NOTE Sen. Blumenthal Challenges Students United States Senator Richard Blumenthal delivered the 2015 Kerlin Lecture. The title of his talk, “Environmental Enforcement— Giving the Law Teeth,” drew upon his experiences as a senator as well as his time as the Attorney General of Connecticut.

He challenged law students to build upon the existing environmental record and find new ways to utilize the law to protect the environment.

In 2003, during his tenure as attorney general, Sen. Blumenthal was one of the nine attorneys general in the northeast who filed suit against the Bush Administration charging that planned changes to the Clean Air Act would exempt thousands of industrial air pollution sources, a change that would result in an increase in air pollution in their states.

Dean Emeritus Richard Ottinger extended the invitation to Sen. Blumenthal. Their friendship reaches back to the 1960s when they met in Washington, D.C. At the time, Dean Ottinger was one of the directors of the Peace Corp and Sen. Blumenthal was an aide to Sen. Abraham A. Ribicoff from Connecticut. The two have remained friends since.

 After the lecture, Senator Blumenthal stayed to talk with current students and ask them how they planned to use the law to protect the environment

12

PA C E L AW A L U M N I M A G A Z I N E

A Watershed IN TESTIMONY this past December that was covered by news outlets from across the state, a member of the New York State Assembly Corrections Committee asked Professor Michael Mushlin the importance of oversight of the state prison system.

“On a scale of 1 to 10?”

“Yes.” “I think it is an 11,” replied Professor Mushlin.

In a legal career focused on prison reform and prisoners’ rights, Professor Mushlin has experienced a watershed year. He contributed to a conference that brought together both reformers and prison officials for a meeting that produced a road map for future action— something the two groups had never achieved before.

The New York State Assembly Corrections Committee convened hearings and invited Professor Mushlin, a widely-recognized expert in the field, to submit testimony. And “The New York Times” published his op-ed, co-written by his colleague Michele Deitch, giving it most prominent placement on the page.

“While we are witnessing a movement for increased police accountability, the need for transparency and accountability is even more urgent in the nation’s jails and prisons, given their closed environments and lack of cellphones and body cameras to capture abusive encounters,” reads one passage of their editorial that puts the issue in perspective.

Having spent 30 years educating and advocating in the area of prison reform, especially related to the practice of solitary confinement, Professor Mushlin notes a sea change in public opinion. The shift became apparent to him at the groundbreaking conference last September. Martin Horn, the former New York City Commissioner of Corrections, invited both reformers like Professor Mushlin but also prison officials to meet and discuss alternatives to solitary confinement and other questionable prison practices. Over two days, the group hashed out a blueprint for the future that received support from both sides of the debate.

“I believe, when we look back, we are going to say that this was the turning point,” said Professor Mushlin.

“We are entering the stage where reform will occur.”

Professor Mushlin considers Commissioner Horn to be his colleague in the effort, an irony that is not

Year–30 Years in the Making lost on him. The two used to be fierce adversaries and it has taken decades to get to this point. In years past, he says, the two groups tended to shout at one another, making little effort to actually communicate.

Reformers were adamant that solitary confinement constitutes torture. Prison officials charged that others had no appreciation for the difficulties that arise when working with convicted prisoners.

“People on my side had to come to grip with the problems they face. People on the other side had to consider alternatives to common practices. But it is two sides of the same coin.”

Professor Mushlin is also quick to praise his two research assistants who supported the actions of the conference participants. Pace Law students Erica Danielsen and Sarah Lusk composed one of the teams of reporters assigned to each of the three working groups. The reporters recorded the hours of discussions, processed the ideas and opinions, and drafted a working document that conveyed the discussions of the group—an arduous task.

“Marty (Horn) emailed me to say theirs was by far the best report and I think it was,” he says, without any effort to conceal his pride. The other two teams included PhD students from John Jay College of Criminal Justice and students from Columbia Law School.

The final document is still in preparation for publication with the hope that its distribution will expand the discussion and further prompt effective prison reform. To put the need in perspective, Professor Mushlin notes that New York State spends about $2 billion a year to incarcerate about 54,000 prisoners. And the problems in the prisons, he says, are hard to ignore.

“Out of sight out of mind” has permeated the prison system. However, it was the escape of two prisoners from Clinton Correctional Facility last summer, as well as the beating death of another inmate, that provoked the Assembly hearing. Legislators invited Professor Mushlin to address the hearing as well as submit written testimony. He used the opportunity to stress the vital need for oversight within the prisons, a step that helps curb abuses of power that lead to

I believe, when we look back, we are going to say that this was the turning point.

such incidents as the beating death and the overuse of solitary confinement.

“New York has mechanisms for oversight that it is not using,” he notes. “That is a serious omission that must be addressed. They have got to open the prisons for oversight.”

In the weeks following the hearing, Professor Mushlin and Michele Deitch, a lecturer at the University of Texas, Austin and a regular collaborator on the issue, debated next steps. Their discussions led to the op-ed in the “Times.”

Putting this third step into perspective, Professor Mushlin remarked, “Having ‘The New York Times’ convey your message for you—I couldn’t be more pleased.”

SPRING 2016

13

STUDENT PROFILE

OF NOTE

14

Sarah Lusk, 3L SARAH LUSK HAS WANTED to be a lawyer since she was 12 years old. And though the kind of law she has considered practicing has evolved some over the years, she says her passion for wanting to help people has remained constant.

“I see the law as the ultimate way to affect change in people’s lives,” she shared recently.

It was the strong reputation for preparing students for careers in public interest that drew her to Pace Law School. Originally from Columbus, Ohio, Sarah first settled in Washington, D.C. where she earned her undergraduate degree in political science and history at American University.

The program at American, which Sarah says draws heavily on experiential learning, encourages students to become involved in issues they care about. Sarah’s classes included time spent in the halls of Congress, the courts, and the White House to enable the students to develop a better understanding of the political landscape. Sarah found this approach very appealing, especially as she had long considered running for public office.

However, the experiences also opened her eyes to other sides of the current political scene, ones inconsistent with her ideals. Her new perspective set her on track for a different career, and while she has not ruled out running for public office in the future, she wanted to explore other avenues available to help people.

To explore a different facet of legal practice, Sarah took a job as an office manager and legal assistant at a small law firm in Bethesda, Maryland.

The lawyers represented plaintiffs in asbestos cases, workers who had contracted mesothelioma from working with the toxic material. This work captured Sarah’s heart.

“I saw my dad and my grandfather in many of these workers,” she said. “My grandfather had been the head of the union at the Owens Corning plant back in Ohio. I understood these workers’ stories.”

However, these cases were emotionally challenging. During the course of the trials, many of the plaintiffs became too ill to participate. The lawyers worked hard to ensure the plaintiffs received

PA C E L AW A L U M N I M A G A Z I N E

“I saw my dad and my grandfather in many of these workers. My grandfather had been the head of the union at the Owens Corning plant back in Ohio.

I understood these workers’ stories.”  needed care. It was not uncommon for cases to close and the cash awards go to the original plaintiff’s survivors. However, some of Sarah’s warmest memories were the notes the firm would receive from family members telling them how much their work had meant to everyone.

With this experience, Sarah had found her calling and she began to research law schools with a solid focus in public interest law. She found the program at Pace, combined with its location just outside New York City, to be the perfect combination.

During her time as a law student, Sarah has drawn upon her knowledge of history, especially social movements, to explore the various ways

New Concentrations Designed with an Eye On the Jobs Market that the law can benefit political efforts. As a member of the “Pace Law Review”, she published an article that discusses the effect that school suspensions have on special education students. Her research included an examination of the federal policy of “free and appropriate education” as well as the long-term effects of the suspensions.

As President of PILSO and a member of the Criminal Justice Society, Sarah organized a panel discussion to address the rights of incarcerated women in New York State. Especially offensive to her is the routine treatment of pregnant inmates including the shackling of women while they are in labor.

Working with Professor Michael Mushlin on his efforts towards prison reform (see page 12) has been a natural step for Sarah. For the last two years, she has worked as a research assistant and earned high praise from Professor Mushlin along with the larger circle of professionals and academics dedicated to this work.

The long hours did not faze her as she devoted herself to the effort.

“The medical community has documented the devastating effect that solitary confinement has on prisoners,” she commented recently, citing just one of the reasons she has worked so tirelessly.

Sarah is building her legal career on an appreciation of citizens’ efforts to bring about constructive change in society. At this point, though, it might not be possible to untangle her knowledge of social movements from her expanding knowledge of the law. Looking back at history, she has found so many examples to inform her future actions.

Asked if she could have been active in any social movement in history, which one would she choose?

“The suffragettes. It was probably the first time that women really started to get involved in the political process and take control of their lives. I really respect the women who were active in that movement and helped to get us to where we are today. To see that energy, that commitment to making change—it is inspiring.”

THE SCHOOL LAUNCHED two new concentrations this year—Real Estate & Land Use and Criminal Practice. Both initiatives prescribe a list of courses that focus on a specific practice area, an asset both to students as they plan their three years of law school but also to potential employers seeking to choose the most qualified applicants from a pool of new graduates. The new concentrations were designed in consultation with members of the legal community, said Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Horace Anderson, and will continue to be evaluated in light of current hiring trends.

Professor Shelby Green oversees the real estate concentration which includes courses in land use law, real estate transaction, finance and historic preservation. In addition to electives, students also choose an externship in such areas as legal services or real estate law. To qualify for the concentration, students must accrue a minimum of 15 credits in the area of real estate and land use. Upon graduation, they will be prepared to practice in such settings as law firms, municipal governments or private sector development companies.

To achieve the Criminal Practice concentration, students must complete three required foundational courses plus select four additional electives including an externship.

“The criminal practice concentration ensures that students will know the law governing criminal law and procedure, learn the skills needed for criminal practice, and take part in a series of rich opportunities for supervised experience in the field,” explained Professor Lissa Griffin. “By the time they graduate and pass the bar, they will be ready for careers either as prosecutors or criminal defense attorneys.”

The new concentrations were designed in consultation with members of the legal community and will continue to be evaluated in light of current hiring trends.

SPRING 2016

15

OF NOTE Mentorship for Minority Students AT A KICK-OFF EVENT held at Pace Law, local members of the Hispanic National Bar Association launched Law School Sin Límites (LSSL) for students with ties to Westchester County. Part of a national program, LSSL provides mentors and other support to high school seniors and college students who are the first in their families to attend college or come from populations traditionally under-represented in the United States legal community.

Town Justice Walter Rivera of the Greenburgh Town Court is leading the local effort. He is joined

by Pace Law alumna Marcia Guevara (’12 LLM), the Deputy Regional President of HNBA Region II, Westchester.

“While in law school, I was not a part of a mentoring program and as a result, I faced many unnecessary obstacles,” recalls Ms. Guevara. She earned her original law degree from Universidad Catolica Andres Bello in Caracas, Venezuela. “For this reason, I want aspiring law students to be able to learn from my mistakes.”

Pace, the only law school in Westchester County and one with a minority student population that is roughly 25 percent of total enrollment, is partnering with the initiative. Participants, known as LSSL Fellows, have visited the Pace Law campus and attended

 Town Justice Walter Rivera 16

PA C E L AW A L U M N I M A G A Z I N E

classes in order to acquire firsthand exposure to the law school experience.

“I have had a longstanding interest and involvement with mentoring high school, college, and law students as well as young attorneys,” commented Judge Rivera. “This past summer, we had eight interns at the Greenburgh Court including three Pace Law students, a college student and four high school students. I make the time because I have benefited from mentors throughout my legal career and I believe it is important to give back. HNBA Law School Sin Límites provides another avenue for me to mentor students who are interested in entering the legal profession.”

Mentors come from all facets of the legal profession. They donate their time to the program and agree to meet regularly with students to provide encouragement, information about the profession or advice about the law school application process. Pace Law alumni who may wish to become mentors or who know a student who might benefit from LSSL are invited to contact Judge Rivera at wrivera@greenburghny.com “Mentoring is a two way street. I learn from the students and get to hear and explore their viewpoints.

They bring enthusiasm and a passion for learning that is contagious,” said Judge Rivera.

 Judge Rivera and Marcia Guevara (right) greet mentors

WHEN PAUL ALVAREZ, working under student practice orders, argues a case in immigration court, he knows he is not simply dealing with abstract legal concepts. The clients he represents and the stories behind many of these cases reflect experiences strikingly similar to his own. A 3L who is only months away from becoming an attorney, Paul was once an undocumented immigrant.

Born in Ecuador to a teenage mother, Paul came to the United States when he was 9 years old. Part of a close-knit, extended family, he says they each made their way “one by one.” Settling in Westchester, his parents pursued a new life where the family eventually became business owners—and citizens.

“The immigration process, the citizenship process, was my first view of being an attorney. It looked awesome to me,” Paul said, adding, “I always knew becoming a lawyer was what I wanted to do.”

Paul’s path to Pace Law was hardly a straight line. He had received his green card in high school which allowed him to apply to college and receive an academic scholarship. After graduating from SUNY Oneonta, he got a job for what was then the Bank of New York which, shortly after, was bought out

by Chase. At about that time, Paul decided to leave banking to help with his father’s business.

The Alvarez family business reads like the American Dream. Paul’s dad had worked his way up from a dishwasher in a deli where he proved his value as an employee. Even more vital to the family’s experience, this affiliation provided them with the sponsorship necessary to acquire green cards.

When the deli eventually closed, Paul’s parents opened a cleaning business that soon employed 12 workers. When Paul joined the effort, he helped structure the business so it could continue to grow.

“But my dad always wanted me to be a professional,” he says. “In Ecuador, an attorney is called ‘doctor,’ a doctor of laws.”

Paul’s first attempt at taking the LSATs was disappointing and sowed doubts about his goal.

His dream to become a lawyer hadn’t gone away but he admits he set it aside for a while. He married and he and his wife bought a house in Pleasantville, N.Y. where Paul became active in the local business community. He pursued a paralegal program and then worked for a lawyer, a solo practitioner in Westchester who took many immigration cases.

“My clients started asking me, ‘When are you going to be my attorney?’ They knew I had been on the other side of the desk. They knew I really cared about their cases.”

With his wife’s encouragement, Paul sat for the LSATs a second time. Better prepared, he scored

STUDENT PROFILE

Paul Alvarez, 3L

higher and applied to Pace Law. He says it was the only school he wanted to attend. The location was ideal but he was also drawn to the strong clinical programs, especially the Immigration Justice Clinic and the Criminal Justice Clinic, the two areas where he wanted to specialize. Acceptance in hand, everything fell into place quickly and he started in January instead of waiting until fall.

“At the first meeting during orientation, I spotted Professor Merton and went over to talk with her.”

The director of Pace Law’s Immigration Justice Clinic, Professor Vanessa Merton welcomed him and suggested he apply for the clinic when he became a 3L. Paul told her of the depth of his experience as a paralegal and made his argument to participate as a 2L. “I remember I said, ‘Ask me any question.’”

The two of them discussed cases and scenarios and, drawing upon his previous work, Paul explained how he would address each one. He succeeded. Paul was admitted into the immigration clinic during his second year which then allowed him to participate in the Criminal Justice Clinic his third year. Adding to his practical experience, Paul has also been active in several moot court opportunities including the baseball arbitration competition at Tulane.

“The 1L year is critical and you need that foundation, of course” he says. “But there is a world of difference when you represent a client. It is hard to get that experience by just reading a book; you simply have to do it.”

Even before graduation, Paul had a job offer— he and the lawyer who had once hired him as a paralegal sat down recently and mapped out plans for him to return as a junior partner. He will focus on immigration cases.

“I just want to give back.”

SPRING 2016

17

“…an exciting Forty years—four decades that have included seven American presidents, four Supreme Court chief justices and more than 8,000 students starting their legal careers at Pace Law. Since our founding, Pace has stressed the importance of learning not just in the classroom, but outside of it as well.

Forty years later, this core foundation has proven to be more relevant than ever as students successfully transition from law school to legal practice in today’s marketplace. No longer the new kid on the block among law schools, Pace has carved a unique and valuable place in legal education, well poised to grow even stronger over the next 40 years.

The new school will provide a traditional form of legal education to serve the needs of the mid-Hudson region which is currently without a law school.

—Dr. Edward Mortola, excerpt from a letter to the Board of Regents, March 1974

The driver behind the creation of the School was Pace University President Dr. Edward Mortola. An educational visionary, Dr. Mortola elevated Pace from a college to a university and from a school based in lower Manhattan to one that extended to Westchester County. His keen eye saw both a dearth of opportunities for talented local candidates to attend law school as well as a growing business community in need of skilled lawyers.

1974 Edward J. Mortola, President of Pace University, writes to Judge Morris E. Lasker of the United States District Court: “A small, quality law school is being planned…to make unique and significant contributions to the University at large and to the Westchester community. Its graduates should be welcomed into the profession and into allied fields.”

● 18

1975 The Pace University School of Law opens its doors on the White Plains campus; Dean Robert B. Fleming welcomes 250 day and evening students

● PA C E L AW A L U M N I M A G A Z I N E

opportunity.”

by Joan Gaylord

 Edward J. Mortola (left) served as president of Pace from 1960 to 1984.

More than anyone, he is credited with the creation of Pace Law. The official charter (above) that allows Pace University to confer Juris Doctor degrees.

1979 Construction completed on the Joseph and Bessie Gerber Glass Law Center Pace Law School graduates its first class of law students

●

1981 Alumni association established with representatives in 13 states

1982 Dean Fleming retires and interim dean Justice James D. Hopkins assumes leadership

●

●

SPRING 2016

19

“. . . A N E X C I T I N G O P P O R T U N I T Y .”

 Robert Fleming’s legal career, prior to becoming dean of Pace Law School, included years spent defending those called before the House Un-American Activities Committee.

“He was an extraordinary human being as well as an educational entrepreneur,” recalls Dean Emeritus Richard Ottinger. Dr. Mortola first hired Dean Ottinger as a faculty member in 1984 and he later served as dean from 1994-1999.

He recalls that Dr. Mortola “took a small school for accountants and created a fullblown university.”

Archives housed in the university library, including transcripts of oral histories and carbon copies of the scores of letters that Dr. Mortola wrote to lawyers, judges, elected officials and business leaders, reveal the effort, determination, and collective energy he and others harnessed in order to bring forward their idea.

Pace’s first step, taken in the early 1970s, was to affiliate with New York Law School. Initially, the Pace trustees thought to pursue a formal merger. Dr. Mortola‘s reminiscences, however, describe the relationship with NYLS’s trustees as “far from perfect,” enough to kill the plan and prompt a different approach. Pace would establish its own law school.

In May of 1973, Pace officials presented their proposal to the Joint Conference on Legal Education in the State of New York. Acting on the advice of the Conference, they next petitioned the Board of Regents of the University of the State of New York and the State Education Department for an amendment to the School’s charter that would allow Pace to award law degrees.

In a letter from 1974 sent to Joseph McGovern, chancellor of the Board of Regents, Dr. Mortola emphasizes the need for broader access to legal education.

Drawing from a 1972 report of the American Bar Association’s Task Force on Professional Utilization, Dr. Mortola cited an increasing number of people taking the LSATs, a surge that was expected to continue.

From the start, officials planned to locate the law school in Westchester County, to complement the new undergraduate campus in that area. By then, Pace officials were quite familiar with expansion and the attendant growing pains, but creating a law school required a more complex effort than simply acquiring additional property.

“There’s a whole different process in starting a law school, different from everything we had ever done before,” reads a passage from Dr. Mortola’s oral history.

To guide their efforts, the trustees engaged Dr. Michael H. Cardozo, past executive secretary of the American Association of Law Schools, to serve as a consultant.

Next, Dr. Mortola gathered a group of 100 advisors from various facets of the Westchester community and tasked them with assessing the plan and discerning the best steps to take in response to local needs.

They began with the most basic issues: should the school offer both full-time and part-time programs? Should there be an evening program? Dr. Mortola recalled the growing excitement as the group reviewed each issue: “Absolute, total enthusiasm. It was just remarkable. Westchester was eager and ready. The County Executive then, Al Del Bello; the Mayor, Al Delvecchio; and the local officials were all enthusiastic about the law school.”

1983

1987

The Honorable Janet Johnson named dean of the School of Law. Serving for six years, she established Pace’s first direct client representation legal clinic, John Jay Legal Services

Barbara Salken Criminal Justice Clinic established

LL.M. program in environmental law launched

● 20

Environmental Litigation Clinic established Pace Energy Project (now known as the Pace Energy and Climate Center) launched

by Pace Law professor and former United States Congressman, Richard L. Ottinger

● PA C E L AW A L U M N I M A G A Z I N E

To establish adequate financial resources, the University earmarked more than $2.5 million in contributions from corporations and individuals in addition to seed funding from the University budget. While Dr. Mortola himself might not have been a lawyer, his letter to the New York State Department of Education nonetheless built a strong closing argument: “• There are funds.

• There are facilities available.

• There is leadership.

• There is genuine concern for quality.

• There are distinguished law professors and deans who have agreed to participate actively and authoritatively in faculty and staff selection and curriculum development.

• There is a remarkable degree of community support.

• There is a need for a school of law in this area which is so rapidly growing and lacks opportunity for the study of law.

 Nick Robinson, founder of the environmental law program; Barbara Black, law professor and interim dean; Justice James D. Hopkins of the Supreme Court of the State of New York, interim dean; John Humbach, law professor

• There is a greatly expanded and expanding corporate community that employs thousands of college graduates who cannot study law without giving up their positions unless a school of law is made available in Westchester County.

• We only lack the opportunity to begin.”

Five weeks later, on April 26, 1974, the Department awarded Pace University a charter for a law school. In its press release, the state noted this would help to meet the needs of the mid-Hudson region. The release also shared that Pace would be the first New York school outside of the city to offer a part-time program of legal education.

Interestingly, the Department also granted law school charters to Yeshiva University and City University of New York at that same meeting, showing the clear perception of a shortage of opportunities in New York to study law.

Moving rapidly, school officials set a goal of welcoming 150 day and 100 evening students for the 1975-76 academic year. With limited time to prepare, Dr. Mortola hired a dean and quickly thereafter a second dean (“if at first you don’t succeed…”), Robert Fleming. Dean Fleming left a practice defending clients called before the House Un-American Activities Committee. His oral history reveals that he was drawn to Pace by what he described as “an exciting possibility.”

As Dean Fleming hired faculty, librarians and administrative staff, the trustees altered their original plan to locate the law school on the recently acquired Pleas-

 An undated photo of students gathering on the lawn between Preston and the library

1989

1993

Annual student-run National Environmental Law Moot Court Competition launched

1991

Land Use Law Center established under the direction of Professor John Nolon

Dean Janet Johnson resigns to return to teaching; Steven H. Goldberg succeeds her

Institute of International Commercial Law founded

Professor Barbara Black named interim dean and serves until June of 1994

●

●

●

SPRING 2016

21

“. . . A N E X C I T I N G O P P O R T U N I T Y .”

 Preston Hall then and now

antville campus. They looked instead for space in White Plains, closer to the federal and state courthouses, and the hub of the Westchester legal community. The result, of course, was the purchase of Preston Hall. It may seem surprising in light of today’s full campus, but Preston was originally supposed to house the entire school.

The main classroom would be the second floor space that currently serves as the faculty lounge. The library would be located in the Tudor Room, an adequate but limiting solution.

This is where Mrs. Bessie Glass enters the picture.

According to Dr. Mortola’s account, a few years earlier, when Pace was still a college and Dr. Mortola was still pursuing a short-lived plan to establish a center for the study of law and society as a precursor to a law school, Mrs. Glass had tried to interest New York Law School in creating a new school to honor her late husband, Joseph Glass, one of its graduates. Her plan included locating the proposed school on the Glass family property in Mount Kisco, in northern Westchester County.

Finding the location unappealing for a Manhattan-based school, the trustees did not act on her proposal.

Dr. Mortola was aware of her offer due to his affiliation with New York Law School during the time that Pace was considering making it part of Pace College.

He asked if the trustees would mind if he went and talked with Mrs. Glass. With his original plan to create a center, Dr. Mortola thought the Mount Kisco property might be a suitable location.

The two visited and, by all accounts, hit it off quite well. Mrs. Glass, however, held to her conviction to create a law school, not a center.

Undeterred, Dr. Mortola made additional visits to Mount Kisco and also invited Mrs. Glass to join him for lunch at his office in the city. As months unfolded and Dr. Mortola set aside his plan for a center in favor of proceeding directly to the creation of a law school, Mrs. Glass set aside her insistence to locate a school in Mount Kisco. With the charter in hand and the purchase of the White Plains property, Mrs. Glass signed on to the project.

She pledged $1 million to construct what is now the Gerber Glass Law Center. She fulfilled her pledge with Tenneco stock, a gift that accrued an additional $37,000 before Pace liquidated the shares. The additional money went towards the purchase of books to stock the shelves.

Dean Fleming described the first day of classes as “a madhouse.” He had delayed the opening for two weeks but the extra time didn’t seem to matter. Both the day and evening programs were oversubscribed and people showed up to pay their deposits the same day they planned to attend their first class.

The students reflected the anticipated demographic of people who had been waiting for this opportunity. In his oral history, Dean Fleming recalled that most were older than traditional law students and many were women. “I think that first year it was on the order of 35 to 40 percent women, which was an awful lot in ’76,” he recalled.

1994 Professor Richard Ottinger appointed acting dean in July and dean in December International Program established and led by Professor Gayl Westerman LL.M. in Comparative Legal Studies created

● 22

1995 Pace becomes one of only 22 law schools nationwide authorized to confer a research doctorate degree, the Doctor of Juridical Science (SJD) in Environmental Law

● PA C E L AW A L U M N I M A G A Z I N E

1997 Professor Barbara Black creates the Securities Arbitration Clinic Investor Rights Clinic established

●

Professor Ben Gershman remembers a lively and productive semester that sometimes bordered on chaos. Pace shared the campus with the College of White Plains as well as the Good Counsel community. Though the law school was housed in Preston, he recalls that some of the nuns still lived on the fourth floor at that point. It was not unusual, he says, for them to cut through the building during the day, mixing in with the law students.

The same energy and activity that had enticed Professor Gershman to join the faculty brought in other pioneers as well. The original team included Ralph Stein, Josephine King, James DeMarco and Hervey Johnson. “We were creating something that didn’t exist before,” recalled Professor Gershman, who, alone among the original faculty continues to teach at the school.

With applications pouring in, Dean Fleming expanded the faculty to meet the needs of the growing student body. His oral history conveys that he didn’t advertise; word circulated that there was a new law school and his box filled with resumes, a mix of both scholars and practicing attorneys.

“I picked people who looked interesting,” said Dean Fleming, hiring people who had strong law school records and had gone on to acquire professional experience “at a high level.”

Among these early hires was Nick Robinson who led one of Pace Law’s most significant initiatives—a program focusing on environmental law, a new field at that time. Professor Robinson had previously served on the Legal Advisory Committee to the President’s Council on Environmental Quality and was among the few legal scholars to foresee how large and important the field would become.

“I agreed to come to Pace to begin one of our nation’s very first environmental law specializations,” recalled Professor Robinson during a recent interview. “The dean endorsed my proposals, on the condition that I do all the work, so my first task was to recruit colleagues to join me. Thank goodness we found an extraordinary group: Dick Ottinger, Ann Powers, Jeff Miller and John Nolon.”

Their efforts, of course, produced an environmental law program that has consistently ranked among the best in the country.

“I agreed to come to Pace to begin one of our nation’s very first environmental law specializations.

—Professor Nick Robinson

The 1980s In just five years, Pace had attracted a strong faculty and a growing student body.

With this solid foundation in place, Dean Fleming retired in 1982. Justice James D. Hopkins of the New York State Supreme Court served as interim until 1983 when Dean Janet Johnson took office. One of the country’s few women law school deans, she brought a wealth of experience as a professor, a judge, as well as a practicing attorney, making her well suited to guide the nascent school through the next decade.

During her first year, Dean Johnson focused on providing a skills- based legal education and established Pace’s John Jay Legal Services, which provided students

1998

1999

Federal Judicial Honors Program created

Dean Ottinger retires and is succeeded by David S. Cohen

UN Environmental Diplomacy Practicum created

Equal Justice America Disability Rights Clinic established

●

●

2000

2003

State-of-the-art, 27,000-square-foot classroom building opens

The New York State Judicial Institute opens on the Pace Law School campus

●

●

2004 Stephen J. Friedman succeeds Dean Cohen

● SPRING 2016

23

“. . . A N E X C I T I N G O P P O R T U N I T Y .”

As a faculty candidate, Pace struck me as a place that simultaneously valued practical legal training, rigorous and engaged classroom teaching, service to the community, and a deep scholarly inquiry into complex questions about law and society.

—Professor Bridget Crawford.

with the opportunity to gain practical experience representing actual clients. Five years later, Pace opened both the Barbara Salken Criminal Justice Clinic and the Environmental Litigation Clinic.

The 1980s also saw the creation of the first two centers affiliated with Pace, the Women’s Justice Center and the Pace Energy Project, now known as the Pace Energy and Climate Center (“PECC”). Professor Ottinger, founder of the PECC, noted recently the dual purpose that the centers have served. “They provide additional opportunities for our students to gain practical experience, of course. But they also expand the reputation of Pace because the work of the centers reaches beyond academia.”

The 1990s Steve Goldberg arrived at Pace on the cusp of the new decade, stepping into the dean’s office in 1989, just as legal education entered a transformative era.

“The bastion of what had existed was changing,” he recently remarked.

In 1992, the American Bar Association Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar created a minor earthquake with its MacCrate Report, criticizing the theoretical approach that had become prevalent in legal education. The report called for a more focused professional training to better prepare students for legal practice.

“Of course, Pace was doing this already,” remarked Professor Goldberg. “The School had an amazingly good faculty for a school as young as it was and a lot of the faculty had practical experience. They understood the practice of law.”

To complement the array of practical opportunities available to its law students, Pace developed new skills classes, including an integrated writing program.

Spearheaded by Professor Michelle Simon, the two-semester program combined legal writing instruction with a substantive course, and was taught by full-time tenured faculty. Professor Simon described it as an innovative approach that concurrently taught legal doctrine along with analytical and writing skills, so as to accustom students to the practice of using doctrine to advance a client’s interest.

The 2000s At the start of the new millennium, a flood of young, talented professors joined the faculty.

“As a faculty candidate, Pace struck me as a place that simultaneously valued practical legal training, rigorous and engaged classroom teaching, service to the community, and a deep scholarly inquiry into complex questions about law and society,” recalled Professor Bridget Crawford who was hired in 2003 after more than six years at Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy LLP. The next year, David Cohen, who had become Dean in 1999, hired Horace Anderson and Darren Rosenblum.

2005

2008

Immigration Justice Clinic opened Pace awarded the ABA Award for Distinguished Achievement in Environmental Law and Policy School initiates the annual International Criminal Court Moot Competition

● 24

2007

Michelle Simon, a faculty member since 1985, appointed dean

Michelle S. Simon appointed interim dean, succeeding Stephen J. Friedman who becomes president of Pace University

Theodore W. Kheel Center on the Resolution of Environmental Interest Disputes created

● PA C E L AW A L U M N I M A G A Z I N E

Public Interest Law Center created

●

“It struck me as a place where people who are passionate about teaching and who wanted to prepare the next generation of lawyers could experiment, try out ideas and develop new programs in service of that goal,” recalled Professor Anderson, who had been practicing intellectual property law at White & Case LLP. “I was drawn to Pace’s beautiful campus and its intimate size,” Professor Rosenblum remembers. “The intellectual vibrancy of the faculty and the engagement of such diverse students has made it the perfect home for my growth as a teacher and a scholar.”

Following, Dean Cohen’s five year term, Stephen J. Friedman became dean of the law school in 2004. Three years later, when Dean Friedman was appointed president of Pace University, Professor Simon succeeded him and led Pace Law into the next decade.

The 2010s Its sterling faculty, its institutional flexibility and its practical approach to legal education have enabled Pace to navigate the most challenging era that law schools have experienced in decades. Over the last few years, Pace elevated its ranking in both environmental as well as public interest law programs. It was recognized by “National Jurist” as the law school that had “the greatest consistent improvement” in employment rates over a five year period.

At 40, the Law School continues to move forward. Over just the past two years, Pace Law has reorganized its curriculum into a series of concentrations aligned with the main areas of legal practice such as litigation, business law and criminal practice. These offer a more tailored course of study, along with opportunities to meet and talk with leading practitioners so that students can learn the norms of practice and begin to develop professional networks. The school has also added more clinics and in-the-field courses, including two new programs enabling students to spend their entire last semester in supervised practice.

In May of 2016, Pace celebrated its 40th anniversary in grand style—by announcing an extraordinary gift to the law school from the family of the late environmentalist, Elisabeth Haub, and the renaming of the school in her honor. The gift, the largest that Pace University has received in its history, establishes an endowment for the law school, creates new chairs for distinguished faculty and funds a scholarship program for top students.

The school’s current dean, David Yassky, sums it up: “The gift recognizes four decades of exceptional legal education and an amazing record of success by our alumni. Most important, it will allow us to keep innovating, so we stay ahead of the curve. I think Dean Fleming nailed it 40 years ago when he said Pace offers ‘an exciting possibility’.”

2010 Brazil-American Institute for Law and Environment (BAILE) established

●

2014 2012

David Yassky appointed dean

Pace Community Law Practice established

Neighborhood Justice Clinic established

●

 Bessie Glass’s enduring gift to the law school

2016 Pace Law receives historic gift from the family of Elisabeth Haub; school renamed Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University

●

●

SPRING 2016

25

FACULTY Feminist Judgments

A Conversation with Professor Bridget Crawford a U.S.-based project. We considered several different themes and organizations for the book, but ultimately we decided to focus on U.S. Supreme Court cases because of the Supreme Court’s influence on the legal knowledge and awareness of the American public of the decisions of the Court.

Your book, “Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Opinions of the United States Supreme Court” was published this spring by Cambridge University Press.

How did that book come about?

In 2013, my co-editor Kathy Stanchi at Temple University heard British law professor Erika Rackley speak at a conference about a similar project in the U.K. The U.K. project was itself inspired by the Women’s Court of Canada, a group of Canadian lawyers and law professors who rewrote several Canadian cases from a feminist perspective. The U.K. project rewrote 23 opinions from the Court of Appeal and House of Lords and then paired each rewritten opinion with a commentary that explained the original case, how the feminist rewrite differed, and what difference the feminist rewrite could have made, had it been the actual opinion. Kathy Stanchi thought it would be interesting to try something similar in the U.S. context, so she invited Linda Berger at UNLV and me to join her as co-editors of

26

PA C E L AW A L U M N I M A G A Z I N E

How did you choose which cases to put in the book?

Our book includes 25 Supreme Court cases, from Bradwell v. Illinois decided in 1873 to Obergefell v.

Hodges decided in 2015. The book has over 50 contributors, as each case is paired with a commentary, and we have a substantive introductory chapter.

It was definitely difficult to decide which cases to include! We had an Advisory Panel of over twenty experts who gave us their views on which United States Supreme Court cases would most benefit from a feminist rewriting. With a tentative case list in-hand, we put out an open call for contributors.

We were tremendously grateful that over 100 people applied to be part of the project.

We tried to match contributors’ interests with our own sense, based on input from the Advisory Panel, of cases where a feminist perspective might have made a difference. Some of those cases will be familiar to most lawyers—Roe v. Wade and Lawrence v. Texas, for example. But we sought to have a wide variety of subject matters represented in the volume, too. So there’s a pension case, City of Los Angeles Department Dep’t of Water & Power v. Manhart from 1978, and a case involving the military draft, Rostker v. Goldberg from 1981. Ultimately, we chose 25 cases and assigned to each case an opinion writer and a commentator.

My former students will be surprised to know that there are no tax cases in the book. But don’t worry; there may be a follow-on volume of tax cases.

You’re joking, right? continued on p 28

HIS LEGAL CAREER began in the anti-corruption unit of the New York County District Attorney’s office, but Professor Bennett Gershman left the practice of law for what was then more of an idea than an institution.

“I heard there was a new law school opening in White Plains and I applied,” he recalls. “Frankly, I’ve never looked back.”

Sitting in his office on the third floor of Preston Hall, in the midst of framed photos, mementos and stacks of books, Professor Gershman tells of his ten years as a special prosecutor and what prompted him to leave the work.

“This was during the 1970s,” he says. “When we were investigating cops, everyone liked us. When we started looking at judges, the guillotine came down on our necks. I saw the writing on the wall. I was no longer going to be effective as a prosecutor so I looked for a job as a law teacher.”

Pace Law’s first official Dean, Robert B. Fleming, had told him he liked his qualifications and hired Professor Gershman to teach criminal law. The last of the founding faculty, Professor Gershman recalls a time when Preston Hall contained the entire law school—the library was housed in the Tudor Room, the main classroom was the second floor space that now serves as the faculty lounge, dorm rooms filled the third floor and he remembers that there were still nuns from Good Counsel living on the fourth floor.

“We were pioneers helping to build something new,” he recalls. “It was bold. It was exciting.”

He had never taught before so he drew upon his professional experience but also his vivid memories of his own favorite law professors. Their examples became Professor Gershman’s gold standard for what he wanted to provide for his own students.

There were limited options for casebooks, but he found ones he liked. At that time there was no internet, of course, so legal research was far more onerous but he pored over the law books and crafted syllabi for his classes. He had the students argue cases in class and also do some writing.

As those first semesters unfolded, he sometimes found it necessary to adjust his plans as he and his students settled in, but he knew he had found his calling.

“I loved teaching right from the beginning and I still love it. I’m constantly looking for and finding new ways to teach and I think I’m getting better!”

The classroom has never confined Professor Gershman’s influence. His career as a law professor has provided him with opportunities to indulge his love of writing, an activity that he considers to be

F A C U LT Y P R O F I L E

Professor Bennett Gershman

as integral to academia as teaching. Over the years he has written and updated half a dozen books and also published articles in major journals. A sign of evolving times, he now writes a regular online column for “Huffington Post” where he explores the legal perspectives of topical issues.

His published work has further expanded Professor Gershman’s professional reach. Catching the eyes of newspaper reporters and lawyers, he is regularly called upon to provide quotes for the press as well as expert testimony at trials. During the recent high profile events in Ferguson, Missouri related to the police shooting death of Michael Brown, the Lawyers Guild asked Professor Gershman to contribute expert evidence for their petition to the court to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate whether elected prosecutor Robert McCullough engaged in improper conduct in steering the grand jury to not indict Officer Darren Wilson.

He flew to Missouri where he met with the judge and submitted his affidavit.

Among his favorite calls now are the ones he receives from his former students. Many of them keep in touch, he says, calling to discuss their work or to ask questions. It amuses him that they continue to call him “Professor,” even the ones who are now judges or in other positions of authority. And he also calls upon them, too, asking them to speak to his classes or participate in programs at Pace Law. Though he has been teaching “the hard courses—the ones that are on the Bar exam” for 40 years now, Professor Gershman says he has no plans to retire. In fact, he can’t imagine not teaching. “”Retirement’ isn’t in my lexicon,” he explains.

“What would I do? I love the law. I try hard to help students learn—and I think they see that.”

SPRING 2016

27

FACULTY continued from p 26

No! Tax law is so important! Don’t forget that United States v. Windsor, the 2013 case that laid the groundwork for same-sex marriage, was a tax case.

Tax cases are a fascinating lens on power, privilege and social values. I kid you not when I tell you that we are already planning a follow-up volume of Feminist Judgments: Tax Opinions. Actually, Cambridge University Press has agreed to publish a series of Feminist Judgments books. Over the last year, as we have presented our work at conferences and more informally, people always ask about cases that didn’t make it into the book. There is also interest in looking at decisions of courts other than the United States Supreme Court and other subject-matter specialties. The purpose of the series is to expand the essential inquiry into how feminist methods and perspectives might impact other courts and other fields of law.

So what exactly is a feminist judgment?

To me, feminism is the simple belief in political, social and economic equality for women and men.

As editors, we took a broad view of feminism, thinking of it as a movement and mode of inquiry that has grown to endorse justice for all people, particularly those historically oppressed or marginalized by or through law. So, broadly construed, a feminist judgment is one that centers the experience of disadvantaged people and retains the hope that law can remedy injustice. There is no one way of “doing” feminism. We talk about feminist methods and feminist reasoning processes in the plural.

Can you give an example of where feminist methods or reasoning makes a difference in one of the rewritten opinions?

Let’s take the familiar case of Roe v. Wade. Professor Kim Mutcherson at Rutgers-Camden rewrote that opinion for the book. Professor Mutcherson wrote her judgment in the form of a concurring opinion. She agrees with Justice Blackmun’s judgment that the Fourteenth Amendment privacy right includes a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy, but Professor Mutcherson rejects the trimester approach in favor of a recognition of a woman’s right to cease to be pregnant. Professor Mutcherson locates this right in the both the

28

PA C E L AW A L U M N I M A G A Z I N E

right to privacy and the Equal Protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment insofar as carrying a pregnancy to term requires women (and only women) to use their bodies in a way that subjects them to personal, professional, and social consequences.

Were Pace students involved in the project?

I had three fantastic research assistants: Rosemarie Hebner (3L), Ryan Koleda (3L) and Sheila Arjomandi (2L). Without them, this book would not have stayed on track! Rosemarie, Ryan and Sheila helped me review rewritten opinions and commentaries and cite checked hundreds of cases and other sources. Integral to the integrity of the Feminist Judgments project was that opinion rewriters could only use law and precedent in existence at the time of the original opinion. The larger point is that feminist results were possible under the thencurrent law, but courts went in another direction. The students helped make sure the authors observed these constraints and kept me sane when we were right up against the deadline.

I was also very fortunate to have the involvement of Professor Michelle Simon as one of the contributors to the volume. Professor Simon wrote the commentary to Gebser v. Lago Vista Independent School District, a 1998 case involving a school district’s liability for the rape of minor. Throughout the process of working on the book, it was so helpful to have a colleague right down the hall with whom I could discuss ideas and work out challenges in the editing process.

What are your goals for the book?

The book’s big claim is that perspective matters.

What passes for neutral law making and objective legal reasoning is often bound up in traditional assumptions and power hierarchies. All of us engage in our decision making from a situated perspective that is informed by gender, race, class, religion, disability, nationality, language, and sexual orientation. That is true of judges, too. Because a judge’s worldview informs her or his decisions, the need for diversity on the bench is plainer than ever.

I’m hoping that the book makes people realize that systemic inequalities are not built into the law.

“COMING HERE has been everything I’d hoped it would be,” said Professor Margot Pollans.

Pace Law’s newest faculty addition has settled into her office in the Environmental Law Program suite. Asked what she was hoping to find when she packed up her life in California and moved back east, Professor Pollans was quite specific. Her list included an excellent environmental law program, a cohort of faculty committed to environmental protection as well as a large group of students eager to pursue careers as environmental lawyers. In addition to all of these, Professor Pollans has been delighted to discover an institutional flexibility at Pace Law that has allowed her the opportunity to help craft a new academic focus in her specialty, food law.

“Food law has always been a component of environmental law,” she explained, pointing to agricultural law and FDA law as examples. “But ‘food’ as a distinct field of law has only been around for about five to ten years and as a distinct specialty only in the last few years.”

Her goal is to help make Pace a center of food law research and training. Prior to coming here, Professor Pollans was the inaugural academic fellow at the recently founded Resnick Program for Food Law, a think tank at the UCLA School of Law. When she wished to return to the east coast, she discovered that Pace Law School was seeking to establish a foothold in this nascent specialty.

For an academic institution, such a goal raises a host of questions to be explored as scholars examine the legal systems we currently have in place, address ways to apply these laws to new problems that we face and identify where we need to bring about change.

Taking the discussion from the macro to the micro level, Professor Pollans cited several examples of issues that need to be examined including the environmental problems that stem from food production such as factory farms, health and food policies and how they relate to diet-related diseases, as well as human rights issues related to food production and adequate access to food.

“Food production currently creates a massive set of environmental problems. We need to ask what are the legal tools we need to address these problems and how do we best design these tools?”

To illustrate the scale of the challenge, Professor Pollans noted that the United States has about 2,100 coal-fired power plants and we presently have laws designed to regulate these plants. However, we have about 2 million farms. What agency has the capacity to inspect and regulate that many sites?

F A C U LT Y P R O F I L E

Professor Margot Pollans

“Food production currently creates a massive set of environmental problems.

We need to ask what are the legal tools we need to address these problems and how do we best design these tools?”  While these are questions that Professor Pollans and others in the field are asking, she notes there are different issues related specifically to legal education. While federal law is vital to address many of the challenges related to food production, the immediate practical need is for well-trained transactional and environmental lawyers who understand local regulations and production systems and are prepared to represent clients seeking to move into these areas.

Which brings her attention back to the classroom. Since arriving in New York last summer, Professor Pollans has been hard at work pursuing funding for a food law clinic for Pace students, designing a food law seminar that will be part of next year’s curriculum, serving as faculty director of the Pace-NRDC Food Law Initiative, as well as planning a series of workshops that will soon be available to practicing lawyers in the New York area.

“It has been amazing to have it all happen so quickly,” she said.

Oh—and she is also co-authoring a casebook on food law and, in response to the interest of her students, serving as the faculty advisor for a newly launched Food Law Society. It has been a busy first year!

SPRING 2016

29

FACULTY

No Bitin’ Allowed

A Hip-Hop Copying Paradigm for All of Us

BY PROFESSOR HORACE ANDERSON

IT IS LONG PAST TIME to reform the Copyright Act. The law of copyright in the United States is at one of its periodic inflection points. In the past, major technological change and major shifts in the way that copyrightable works were used have rightly led to changes in the law. Today, owners of copyright face a world where digital technology has made it easy and cheap to reproduce, adapt, distribute, display or perform the works of another. Equally important, a generation of users has grown up expecting to be able to freely usurp the traditional exclusive rights of the copyright owner. If the declining sales and audiences in the music, newspaper and broadcast television industries tell us anything, it is that old legal paradigms regarding copying, and the business models built around them, are in jeopardy.

With what do we replace the old approach to copying? The short answer is: a flexible approach that

distinguishes acceptable, or even laudable, imitation of another’s expression from undesirable copying. At least one creative community has developed norms for policing and distinguishing good copying from bad, copying that promotes “progress” from copying that inhibits it. Hip-hop artists have traditionally employed a norms-based approach to imitation that points to a possible framework for regulating copying under the Copyright Act of the future. The cultural consequences of imitating in the “wrong” way are such that the formal legal consequences are nearly irrelevant (at least within the community.) Even though hip-hop music has become popular music, and popular music is largely owned commercially and protected with copyright law, instances of one hip-hop artist (not record company) suing another over copying are rare. This phenomenon suggests a respect to hip-hop’s internal imitation paradigm that warrants further examination for general use.

Unfortunately for hip-hop artists, judicial interpretations of the rights of copyright owners have rarely been amenable to any view but the strict liability approach respecting only the rights of single authors or small groups of authors. Near absolute protection of the physical copy has been the rule in general case, and in the case of litigants from the hip-hop culture.

Hip-hop cases demonstrate the reluctance to deviate from the strict liability approach. For examples, see Grand Upright Music LTD. V. Warner Brothers Records, Inc.; Jarvis v. A&M Records; or Bridgeport Music, Inc. v. UMG Recordings, Inc. The Copyright Act has a few built-in limitations on the rights of copyright owners that provide some space for imitation of others of parts of a copyrighted work. Chief among the limitations are the idea-expression dichotomy and the prohibition against copyrighting facts. A few narrow allowances for copying of continued on p 32

30

PA C E L AW A L U M N I M A G A Z I N E

Pace Law Faculty Publications (2015) Anderson, Horace

book review

Nolon, John R.

book chapters

Jeanine Pirro, He Killed Them All: Robert Durst and My Quest for Justice, New York Journal of Books (December 2015)

l aw r e v i e w a r t i c l e s

Horace Anderson, No Bitin’ Allowed: A Hip-Hop Copying Paradigm for All of Us, in Hip Hop And The Law (Pamela Bridgewater et al.eds. 2015) Horace Anderson, “Criminal Minded?”: Mixtape DJs, the Piracy Paradox, and Lessons for the Recording Industry, in Hip Hop And The Law (Pamela Bridgewater et al. eds. 2015) Atwell, Barbara L. l aw r e v i e w a r t i c l e s

Barbara L. Atwell, Rethinking the ChildhoodAdult Divide: Meeting the Mental Health Needs of Emerging Adults, 25 Alb. L.j. Sci. & Tech. 1 (2015) Carlisle, Jay C. book chapter

Jay C. Carlisle, Jurisdiction, in New York State Trial Lawyers Institute Decisions (2015).

Czarnezki, Jason J. l aw r e v i e w a r t i c l e s

Jason J. Czarnezki, Creating Order Amidst Food Eco-Label Chaos, 25 Duke Envtl. L. & Pol’y F. 281 (2015) (with Andrew Homan & Meghan Jeans) Jason J. Czarnezki, New York City Rules!

Regulatory Models for Environmental and Public Health, 66 Hastings L.j. 1621 (2015) Jason J. Czarnezki, A Primer: Air and Water Environmental Quality Standards in the United States, 39 Wm. & Mary Envtl. L. & Pol’y Rev. (2015) (with Siu Tip Lam & Nadia B. Ahmad) Jason J. Czarnezki, The Neo-Liberal Turn in Environmental Regulation, Utah L. Rev. (2015) Fishman, James J. l aw r e v i e w a r t i c l e s

James J. Fishman, Who Can Regulate Fraudulent Charitable Solicitation?, Pittsburgh Tax Rev. (2015).

Garfield, Leslie Yalof l aw r e v i e w a r t i c l e

Green, Shelby D. l aw r e v i e w a r t i c l e s

Shelby D. Green, Building Resilient Communities in the Wake of Climate Change While Keeping Affordable Housing Safe from Sea Changes in Nature and Policy, 54 Washburn L.j. 527 (2015) Shelby D. Green, Paradoxes, Parallels and Fictions: The Case for Landlord Tort Liability Under the Revised Uniform Residential Landlord-Tenant Act, 38 Hamline L. Rev. 407 (2015) Griffin, Lissa Lissa Griffin, Forensic Evidence and the Court of Appeal for England and Wales, 4 Brit. J. Am. Legal Stud. 619 (2015) Gross, Jill I. book chapters

John R. Nolon, Mitigating Climate Change by Zoning for Solar Energy Systems: Embracing Clean Energy Technology in Zoning’s Centennial Year, Zoning and Planning Law Report, Vol. 38, Issue 11, December, 2015 John R. Nolon, Climate Adaptation and Disaster Mitigation: Land Use Strategies, The Environmental Forum, Vol. 32, Issue 4 July/ August, 2015 Pollans, Margot l aw r e v i e w a r t i c l e s

Margot Pollans, Regulating Farming: Balancing Food Safety and Environmental Protection in A Cooperative Governance Regime, 50 Wake Forest L. Rev. 399 (2015) Margot Pollans, The Safe Drinking Water/Food Law Nexus, 32 Pace Envtl. L. Rev. 501 (2015)

Jill I. Gross, Teaching Students to be ProblemSolvers and Dispute Resolvers, in Building On Best Practices: Transforming Legal Education In A Changing World (D. Maranville, L. Bliss, C. Kaas & A. Sedillo Lopez eds.) (2015) (with Andrea Schneider and John Lande)

Robinson, Nicholas A.

l aw r e v i e w a r t i c l e

Jill I. Gross, Justice Scalia’s Hat Trick and the Supreme Court’s Flawed Understanding of Twenty-First Century Arbitration, 81 Brook. L. Rev. 111 (2015) Humbach, John A.

book chapters

Nicholas A. Robinson, Legal Redress of Transboundary Air Pollution Through Environmental Cooperation, in Transboundary Pollution (S. Jayakumar, et al. eds., 2015) Nicholas A. Robinson (with Koh Kheng Lian), South-South Cooperation: Foundations for Sustainable Development, in S. Alam, S. Atapattu, C.G. Gonzalez, and J. Rassaque, International Environmental Law And The Global South (Cambridge University Press, 2015)

l aw r e v i e w a r t i c l e

Rosenblum, Darren

John A. Humbach, Is America Becoming A Nation of Ex-Cons?, 12 Ohio St. J. Crim. L. 605 (2015)

l aw r e v i e w a r t i c l e

Mushlin, Michael B.

Gershman, Ben

Michael B. Mushlin, “I Am Opposed to this Procedure”: How Kafka’s In the Penal Colony Illuminates the Current Debate about Solitary Confinement and Oversight of American Prisons, 93 Or. L. Rev. 571 (2015)

Ben Gershman, Criminal Trial Error And Misconduct (3D Ed. 2015)

John R. Nolon, Land Use and Climate Change Bubbles: Resilience, Retreat, and Due Diligence, 39 Wm. & Mary Envtl. L. & Pol’y Rev. 321 (2015)

Jill I. Gross, Arbitration Case Law Update 2015, in Securities Arbitration 2015 (Practicing Law Institute)

Leslie Yalof Garfield, Ratings Fetishism, 39 N.y.u. Rev. L. & Soc. Change 409 (2015)

book

John R. Nolon, An Environmental Understanding of the Local Land Use System, 39 Envtl. L. Rep. 10215 (2015)

l aw r e v i e w a r t i c l e

Darren Rosenblum, More Than A Woman: Insights into Corporate Governance After the French Sex Quota, 48 Ind. L. Rev. 889 (2015) (with Daria Roithmayr) Waldman, Emily Gold l aw r e v i e w a r t i c l e

Emily Gold Waldman, Show and Tell?: Students’ Personal Lives, Schools, and Parents, 47 Conn.

L. Rev. 699 (2015)

SPRING 2016

31

FACULTY

 Professor Horace Anderson

Traditional copyright enforcement was not kind to traditional hip-hop practice.

It is time to turn the tables and allow traditional hip-hop ethos to shape the modern direction of copyright.

continued from p 30

expression are made by the law. The merger doctrine bolsters the idea-expression dichotomy by deeming certain expression “merged” and unprotectable if there are a limited number of ways to express the idea underlying such expression. Additionally, there is the fair use doctrine of the Copyright Act that allows certain uses of copyrighted work for purposes of “criticism, comment, news reporting…or research.”

Why are the forgoing limitations on copyright not enough for my purposes? Primarily because of the danger of overprotection. Excessive compliance leads to cultural impoverishment and there is some

32

PA C E L AW A L U M N I M A G A Z I N E

evidence of this in modern hip-hop music. Traditional copyright enforcement was not kind to traditional hiphop practice. It is time to turn the tables and allow traditional hip-hop ethos to shape the modern direction of copyright.

The modern problem for copyright law is that the world, in a sense, has passed it by. Technology has made copying, adapting, and distributing works much cheaper and easier than before. At least as important is the profound cultural disconnect faced by the copyright industries and the Copyright Act. Since at least the time of the original Napster, the idea that information and culture should be freely available because the technology makes such availability possible has influenced the public mind when it comes to the copyright monopoly and its obsession with charging consumers for access to physical copies of works. Most challenging for proponents of traditional copyright law is that those citizens most interested in following the traditional rules are a dying breed.

What could the future of copyright look like? The hip-hop imitation paradigm focuses on the marketplace impact of copying and the presence or absence of attribution in assessing imitation suggesting possible elements of a new Copyright Act framework.

First, a tiered protection based on the age of the work.

Assuming usurpation risk is greatest when the work is new, and the most financial gain is realized in the first few years, the framework could provide strict liability protection early in the work’s life cycle. As the work ages and becomes known, the level of protection could be relaxed. Years after publication, copying with acknowledgement of source could be permitted.

The framework could go a step further by privileging transformative uses which, combined with the tiered protection, would align copyright law with hiphop’s ethos. And to respect economic incentive goals and to mitigate the risk of under-compensation of authors, a compulsory licensing system for uses of late life cycle works that have become well known would ensure an author gets remunerated for creating a work that has become a springboard for others’ creativity, but the process of follow-on creation is not slowed by transaction costs and the threat of injunction.

An excerpt from a chapter written by Horace E. Anderson, Jr., published in the book “Hip Hop and the Law”, edited by Pamela Bridgewater, andré douglas pond cummings, Donald F. Tibbs

Retirees This is a moment of transition in the life of Pace Law, as many of the faculty members who joined the Law School in its early years are reaching retirement age. In the past year, five extraordinary teachers and scholars have retired from our faculty: Jay Carlisle, David Cohen, Don Doernberg, Jim Fishman and Steve Goldberg.

Each of them made an enormous contribution to the growth and success of our school, and each has had a palpable impact on the development of thousands of alumni.

For more than two decades, Jim was a mainstay of our business law faculty, teaching Corporations and Contracts, while also becoming one of the nation’s leading scholars of nonprofit corporation law. Over 37 years, Don has taught virtually every core course in the curriculum—Torts, Criminal Law, Constitutional Law, Federal Courts, just to name a few—and he taught them with clarity and dedication; many of our alumni owe their fundamental legal-analytic skills to Don’s patient instruction.

Jay joined the Law School in its second year, and virtually since then has been one of our most popular teachers—and deservedly so. His continual and active participation in bar committees exemplifies our ethic of engagement and service, and is a big part of the reason why Pace Law is held in such high esteem by the Westchester legal community.

In addition to contributing as teachers and scholars, both Steve and David served as deans of the Law School. Steve served as dean from 1989 to 1993, and saw the Law School through a period of fiscal challenge; he was also a classic “Socratic method” teacher for first-year students. David played a crucial role in developing the faculty into the top-tier group we are now fortunate to have; he recruited several then-entry-level scholars who have now achieved national recognition, and who are now among our finest teachers.

These five professors have helped build our Law School into what it is today, and we salute their accomplishments.

Jay C. Carlisle, II, 38½ years

Don L. Doernberg, 37 ½ years

S. David Cohen, 15 ½ years

James J. Fishman, 37 ½ years

Steven H. Goldberg, 27 years

SPRING 2016

33

ALUMNI EVENTS Reunion 2015 Alumni and friends of the Classes of 1980, 1985, 1990, 1995, 2000, 2005, and 2010 returned to White Plains on the evening of October 3, 2015, to renew friendships and share stories at 42 The Restaurant atop the RitzCarlton Hotel.

In the lounge and bar of 42, members of the reunion classes, Dean David Yassky and esteemed members of the faculty gathered. Memories were shared and personal and professional milestones were recounted.

Albany Alumni Reception A Pace Law Alumni Reception was held in Albany, NY and at the firm, Whiteman Osterman & Hanna LLP. Alumni joined Dean David Yassky to network with one another in our state capital.

Bartlett Reception The 3rd Annual Ernestine Bartlett Reception was held on April 2, 2015. This year’s honoree was Pace Law alumnus Lyndon Williams, Esq. ’91.

34

PA C E L AW A L U M N I M A G A Z I N E

Meet the Judges 2015 A litigation themed alumni reception was held on April 2, 2015 at Vintage Bar in White Plains. Prospective students, current students, alumni, and professors attended for an evening of networking.

Leadership Awards Dinner The 20th annual dinner celebrated Pace Law and took place on February 26, 2015, at the Westchester Country Club in Rye, NY. The honorees for the evening were The Honorable Jonathan Lippman, Chief Judge of the State of New York and Pace Law alumnus Andrew V. Tung, ASLA, Esq. ’95, LEED AP, a Partner with Divney Tung Schwalbe, LLP.

SPRING 2016

35

CLASS NOTES 1979 Judith K. Meritz spoke at the American Conference Institute’s 2nd Annual Conference on Women Leaders in Life Sciences Law. She is associate general counsel with Medtronic Inc.

1980

V. Gerard Comizio is the author of the forthcoming casebook “International Banking Law: Cases and Materials” (West Academic, 2015).

This is one of the first major law school casebooks on the topic. He is a partner with Paul Hastings and the chair of the Global Banking practice.

He is based in the firm’s Washington, D.C. office.

Philip F. Foglia was named a fellow at the State Academy for Public Administration. He received this award on October 1, 2015 from the Lt. Joseph Petrosino Association for Law Enforcement. His fellow honorees are New York City Police Commissioner Bratton and Congressman King. Philip is the special deputy, chief of investigations with the New York State Inspector General’s office. Philip also authored an article that was featured in the March/April NYSBA Journal.

Honorable Terry Jane Ruderman was appointed to the New York State Supreme Court.

1981

Barry P. Biggar joined Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP as a finance partner.

1982

Hon. Francesca (Leibold) Connolly was appointed by New York State Chief Administrative Judge A. Gail Prudenti to the position of associate justice of the Appellate Term of the Supreme Court, Second Department, Ninth and Tenth Judicial Districts. In this capacity, she will hear appeals from the district, city, town, and village courts in Suffolk, Nassau, Westchester, Rockland, Orange, Dutchess, and Putnam counties. This assignment is in addition to her current duties as a Supreme Court justice, Ninth Judicial District, where she presides

36

over a general civil calendar and the Ninth Judicial District Environmental Claims Part. She has been serving as a New York State Supreme Court justice since 2009.

1985

Nancy D. Kellman was honored by Pace Law School’s Women’s Association of Law Students (WALS) at their annual Pioneer of Justice and Equality for Women and the Law Award Brunch. Nancy is a renowned family and matrimonial attorney.

She was named in “New York” magazine’s Women Leaders in the Law and Westchester County’s Top 25 Attorneys, as well.

1986

Veronique “Ronnie” Hakim was appointed president of New York City Transit.

1987

Fredric I. Green has been appointed chief of the Special Prosecutions division and a second deputy district attorney.

1988

Thomas J. Caruso received the 2015 Marilyn Stagg Award for Service to the Democratic Party from the White Plains Democratic City Committee.

Thomas Kapp retired from the Bronx District Attorney’s office, where he served for 26 years, to join the Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor. The Waterfront Commission licenses all longshoremen on the ports of New York and New Jersey and investigates corruption by organized crime on the waterfront. He is presently a deputy director of law and conducts background investigations on longshoremen applicants and on potential organized criminal activity and provide guidance to staff counsel for administrative hearings conducted by the Commission.

Joseph A. Saccomano was elected to the board of directors for the Business Council of Westchester. Joseph is the office managing shareholder of the White Plains and Albany offices of Jackson Lewis P.C.

PA C E L AW A L U M N I M A G A Z I N E

Anthony J. Schembri is now a professor at the University of Sheffield in the U.K. He is the former commissioner of corrections in both New York City and Florida.

1989

Dr. Nader J. Sayegh was praised for his “countless contributions to society” in a statement issued by Rep. Eliot L. Engel. Dr. Sayegh’s passion for community involvement was noted specifically through his service on various boards.

Anthony Pirrotti, Jr. w as named dean of the New York State Trial Lawyers Institute.

Joseph A. Ruhl h as joined Orange Bank and Trust Company as a regional president. Previous to this, he was with Hudson Valley Bank as senior vice president and division executive in charge of its legal services division.

Robert J. Waine has joined the firm of Dinsmore & Shohl LLP. He will practice out of the corporate department and work with the real estate group.

Nancy J. Barry was awarded the Milton Mollen Commitment to Excellence Award in November 2014 at a ceremony at the Appellate Division Second Department in Brooklyn.

The award is presented to court employees within the AD for excellence in service. Nominated by the Hon. Alan D. Scheinkman, administrative judge of the Ninth Judicial District, the award was presented by Justice Mollen, presiding justice of the Appellate Division Retried. Also in attendance at the award ceremony were Nancy’s husband, Kevin Barry (Pace Law Class of 1987) and her friend and classmate (1989), the Hon. Susan Cacace, Westchester County Court judge.

1990

Hon. Adrian Armstrong was appointed a judge in the Mount Vernon City Court.

Susan M. Corcoran w as honored as a Distinguished 2014 Empire State Counsel by the New York State Bar Association (NYSBA) for her extraordinary pro bono efforts in 2014.

Kathleen Weslock was appointed executive vice president, chief people officer of Frontier Communications.

1991

Janine M. Becker commenced her one year term as president of the Greater Bridgeport Bar Association.

She is the managing member of the Law Offices of Becker & Zowine, LLC in Bridgeport, CT. Sean F.X. Dugan (LLM) returned to Pace to lecture on “Civility Matters” to Professor Fasulo’s Trial Advocacy students on March 10, 2015. The Hon. Lewis Lubell and Lucille Fontana (’81) joined him in the presentation. Sean is a senior life fellow of the American Board of Trial Advocates. He is also a partner with Martin Clearwater & Bell LLP. Lyndon Williams was honored at the Third Annual Ernestine Bartlett Alumni Diversity Reception. He has had a distinguished career as Westchester County legislator, is currently vice chairman of the Westchester County Board of Legislators and was previously a member of the Mount Vernon City Council.

1992

Stephen M. De Luca was invited to serve on the steering committee and governing board of the New Jersey Coalition Against Human

ALUMNI PROFILE

Hon. Malachy E. Mannion ’79 We asked 2L Samantha Hazen to interview the Honorable Malachy E. Mannion, United States District Court Judge for the Middle District of Pennsylvania. Judge Mannion was a member of Pace Law School’s first graduating class.

SH: Coming from Pennsylvania, how did you find out about Pace Law School?

MM: I found out about it through a professor at the University of Scranton [where Judge Mannion attended college]. I went to Pace because Peggy (my wife) was my girlfriend, and she was going to nursing school in New York City. I decided last minute that I was going to chase her!

SH: Do you remember your first law school experience?

MM: Yes. It was criminal law. Having just come from college, I assumed everyone there would be just like me. Of the 75 people, half had just graduated, but the other half were adult students who came back to get law degrees. I was amazed at the age difference.

We’re in the classroom waiting for the professor. There were no upper classmen, no one to ask: “What’s this guy like?” This professor walks down the middle of the aisle and goes behind the desk. He turns around and says (to some effect): There’s a law in Los Angeles that says if you’re convicted of a felony or a misdemeanor in any other state, it would be considered a felony in California, and you must register with city officials. Is it constitutional?

One student raises her hand and said it was not constitutional because no one would have notice of the law coming from a different state.

Professor Gershman (see page 27) smiled and nodded, so one-by-one the hands went up to agree. He then smiled disapprovingly and said he thought this was a law school class: ignorance of the law is no excuse.

I always look at that experience as the beginning of me thinking I want to be a trial lawyer.

A good lawyer can take either side and make it very convincing if they know what they’re doing.

SH: When you were in law school, did you ever think you would become a federal judge?

MM: It wasn’t even on my radar. When I first started, I thought I would be a corporate lawyer and work for a big company. But then I met Professor Gershman and took the trial practice course.

After my first year looking for a job. I got a call in June or July from Peggy Ashbury, the

registrar, saying that a law firm in White Plains had called looking for interns. I worked there that summer, and continued through my third year.

They offered me a job after graduation.

SH: What skills should students develop during our time at Pace?

MM: As a judge, I know that 95 per cent of cases settle, but I think every lawyer should have the ability to try a case. You should be able to stand up and speak in front of strangers and the court, make split-second decisions, and be able to articulate a response to some question related to your case. Sometimes law school can be too academic, but there’s a real world out there.

SH: We are happy to have you back each year for the Federal Judicial Honors Program and for the National Environmental Law Moot Court Competition (NELMCC). What sort of feelings do you have when you visit Pace?

MM: I love visiting Pace. I even enjoy the ride out there. It is nostalgic driving on I-84 and I-87. The first time I went back was when Professor Joy Beane called and said I was their first federal judge. I got invited back with one or two state court judges for a ceremony.

Samantha had the opportunity to intern with Judge Mannion last summer. She also interned in the Honorable Richard J. Sullivan’s chambers in the Southern District of New York and is interning in the United States Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Pennsylvania this summer.

SPRING 2016

37

CLASS NOTES Trafficking, and to serve as chairman of its legislative/policy committee. He served at a pro bono clinic for sex trafficking victims at the Queens Family Justice Center and facilitated classes on child sexual abuse prevention for the Archdiocese of Newark, and served as local Safe Environment coordinator for his church and school, ensuring all teachers, employees, and volunteers are screened and trained in child sex abuse prevention. Stephen also joined Blue Water Divers in Rochelle Park, NJ, as a dive master and Discover Scuba Diving leader.

Additionally, he substituted for the principal trumpet player during a rehearsal of the Riverside Orchestra in New York City. Finally, he started the formation program to become a deacon in the Catholic Church.

THE MANAGING PARTNER of Carter Ledyard & Milburn LLP, Judith Lockhart (‘85) specializes in commercial litigation and employment law. As an undergraduate at Pace University she chose an atypical path—an approach that seems to be typical for Judith.

Growing up in Westchester, she worked full time in the marketing and real estate divisions of Texaco while studying business administration at Pace University at night. Her work at Texaco involved interacting regularly with real estate lawyers and, though her responsibilities at the time were administrative, Judith recalls how frequently she found herself thinking, “This is easy. I could do this!”

Having made up her mind to attend law school, she didn’t wait to finish college first. Judith sat for the LSATs and applied to Pace Law. Admitted in 1982, she enrolled and Pace worked with her to design a program where she could apply law school credits she would earn towards her undergraduate requirements and finish her Bachelor’s degree after her first year of legal studies. Judith achieved this years before Pace implemented the 3+3 program that is now available to select students.

Though she had planned to attend law school in the evening, just as she had pursued her undergrad work, at the very last minute Judith decided to take a leave of absence from Texaco and she enrolled in the day program. After five years of evening classes, Judith recalls that she loved being a full-time student.

“I loved law school,” she shared. “And I was good at it. It satisfied a lot of the things I like to do such as consensus building and problem solving.”

During the school year, Judith worked for a couple different professors, including Jay Carlisle who still teaches at Pace. The summer after her 1L year she was back working at Texaco. This was about the time that the company merged with

1993 Angelina Galiteva w as reappointed to a second term on the California Independent System Operator Corporation board of governors.

Kathleen Gill was named chief of staff/corporation counsel for the City of New Rochelle.

Steven Epstein , a founding partner at Barket, Marion, Epstein & Kearon, LLP, participated as an expert at an August 24 meeting to review drug recognition and impairment research hosted by the Department of Justice (DOJ) in Washington, D.C. He was selected as one of 15 experts invited to participate in a dynamic and informative roundtable discussion that followed presentations by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) on their respective research portfolios. He served as an authority representing legal defense interests and was joined by field and lab practice experts to review drug recognition and impairment research at the daylong event. Steven is a nationally recognized lecturer and renowned author. He is widely recognized as one of the foremost DWI attorneys in the country, specializing in representing clients accused of DWI, vehicular homicides and other criminal offenses. He also proudly serves as a faculty member of the distinguished National College for DUI Defense and an adjunct faculty member of Pace Law School with the trial advocacy program.

Marla E. Wieder was elected secretary of the New York State Bar Association Environmental Law section. She also received the Environmental Section Council Award this past year.

Bruce L. McDermott joined Murtha Cullina LLP as a partner in the regulatory department. He is a member of the Energy & Environmental Practice Groups.

R. Nadine Fontaine was appointed assistant counsel to the governor with a focus on human services. Prior to this, she was at Epiq Systems, Inc., where she was a director.

38

Judith Lockhart ’85

Nicholas M. Ward-Willis w as elected to a one year term on the executive committee of the New York State Bar Association Environmental Law section.

Alicia A. Weissmeier was promoted to chief operations officer of Miller & Milone, P.C. Miller & Milone is a multifaceted law firm that focuses its practice on denial management, Medicaid, financial recovery of accounts receivable, case management/discharge planning, and elder law and estates.

1994

PA C E L AW A L U M N I M A G A Z I N E

David M. Shofi j oined CPA Global as vice president, IP Strategy Solutions.

1995

Andrea I. Castro set up and heads Trident Land’s compliance department focusing on establishing policies and procedures, as well as audit and training programs related to rules and guidelines established by the Dodd-Frank Act and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Andrea is Trident Land Transfer’s compliance counsel. She is also re-

sponsible for reviewing title insurance claims and consumer complaints.

Kristina Hooper published her article, “Breathe But Don’t Panic” on Morningstar.com. Kristina is the U.S. investment strategist and head of U.S. Capital Markets Research & Strategy for Allianz Global Investors.

Maria Valente’s store, Chocolations, based in Mamaroneck, was the subject of a feature in “The New York Times”.

ALUMNI PROFILE

Pennzoil and Judith worked on the property divestitures that stemmed from that transaction. After her 2L year, she worked as a summer associate at Mudge Rose Guthrie Alexander & Ferdon where she was assigned to litigation and trusts & estates. Though Judith’s father is a lawyer who specializes in trusts & estates, she discovered that she preferred litigation.

“I loved the litigation work—it was rockin’ at that time,” she recalls. “I also picked up a specialty in employment law over the years so I had the best of both worlds working on large nuclear power plant litigations and small employment matters.”

Hired as an associate after her graduation from Pace Law, Judith worked at Mudge Rose for about 10 years and was instrumental in hiring as many “Pace people” as she could. When it disbanded, she transitioned over to Carter Ledyard & Milburn, a general practice firm on Wall Street, where she says she does very similar work.

In 2003, they named her managing partner, a responsibility that appeals to the businesswoman she originally expected to become. However, serving as managing partner is another way that Judith has carved out an atypical path. After having her first child, she worked three days a week for six months.

After having her second child, Judith decided the commute from Westchester to Wall Street four days a week and one day at home struck the right balance for both her practice and her family. When she became managing partner, she was back in the office five days a week.

“I’ve never wanted to stop working,” she says, adding, “Even when I worked part time, I didn’t leave my job at the office. When you work in a law firm, it can’t be just a ‘job.’ You need to be committed to the success of the firm.”

The hours she keeps has made it challenging to stay as connected as she would like to the Pace Law community, though. Working in lower Manhattan and getting home most nights at 8:00 p.m. has meant

she has not been able to attend as many events or participate in other activities as she might wish. She does keep in touch with a few fellow alumnae and says she considers Gail Matthews (‘87) and Deborah Magnotta (‘88) to be her best friends. In fact, Judith met both of them during on-campus interviews and both ended up working at Mudge Rose. Networking and keeping an eye open for additional hiring opportunities are ways that she continues to try and give back.

What advice would she have for Pace Law students looking for that first job or for recent grads still finding their way?

“Find an area of law that floats your boat; you are going to be spending a lot of hours working at it and you have to feel proud of what you do every day. Be prepared to hit the ground running; lawyers don’t get a chance to learn many things on the job anymore. Work hard to find a way to make being a lawyer work for you.”

Excellent advice. Just look at how it has helped shape Judith’s career.

1996

1997

Seth Mandelbaum was elected vice chairman of the board of trustees of the Friends of Westchester County Parks. He is a partner with McCullough, Goldberger & Staudt, LLP in White Plains.

Carl L. Finger (LLM) was elected as a trustee for the Village Board in Scarsdale. Carl is a member of Fingers & Finger, P.C., a White Plains law firm.

John Parker has joined Riverkeeper as a program director. He is now the Watershed Program director. Previously, he was a regional attorney for the New York Department of Environmental Conservation.

Desmond Q. Martin has enrolled in funeral directing school.

Sean Nolon was hired by Dartmouth to head the ombudsman’s office for the college. Sean noted in a release on Dartmouth’s website that the purpose

of the ombudsman’s office “is to serve as an informal dispute resolution resource in the institution—to give people options for creative problem solving by speaking confidentially with someone who’s neutral and independent.” Sean will serve as ombudsman part time and will continue teaching at Vermont Law School. Sean is also the director of the Dispute Resolution Program at Vermont.

Joseph A. Sarcinella joined Reed Smith as a partner. His practice areas are focused on real estate and finance.

1998 David I. Aboulafia’s first book, a dark psychological horror novel entitled “Visions Through a Glass, Darkly,” was released by Cosmic Egg Books, an imprint of John Huint Publishing. His second book, a collection of comedic essays entitled “Snapshots from my Uneventful Life,” was released by Library Tales Publishing.

Eric S. Andreas’ novel “Origins Rising” has been recognized as a fi-

SPRING 2016

39

ALUMNI PROFILE

CLASS NOTES John Cahill ’85, ’92 LLM We asked 3L Drew Gamils to interview John Cahill, Counsel at Chadbourne, Principal at The PatakiCahill Group, and former Secretary and Chief of Staff to Former New York State Governor George E. Pataki. Here is their conversation: DG: Why did you choose to become a lawyer?

JPC: After college, I taught and coached basketball at Archbishop Stepinac High School in White Plains. While there, I met Bill Plunkett, a partner at Plunkett & Jaffe, P.C., who convinced me to go to law school. I happened to coach his son on the basketball team and got to know Bill and his family well. I had the opportunity to talk to Bill about my aspirations and desire to make a difference and he told me that law school would provide me the opportunity to do many things besides litigate and that a law school education is invaluable.

Then, in my first year at Pace, I took Civil Procedure with Professor Jay Carlisle. He made me excited about getting involved in the law and understanding the process behind litigation. He opened up the door to the practice of law and was instrumental in shaping my respect and admiration for this profession.

DG: What led you to pursue an L.L.M. in environmental law?

JPC: I started working at Plunkett & Jaffe, P.C. during law school where I focused on environmental and municipal issues and spent a lot of time working on SEQR (State Environmental Quality Review) issues. In the late 80s and 90s, environmental law was still a new field and Pace Law was a leader in its development of an environmental program. I knew an L.L.M. in environmental law would be extremely valuable and with Professor Nick Robinson driving the program, I knew I would only benefit. In Professor Robinson’s environ-

mental law course, I saw a different aspect of law that opened a door and an area of intrigue. I also enjoyed working on land use issues and I have a love for the environment so the L.L.M was beneficial on both a professional and a personal level.

DG: What was your biggest struggle during law school?

JPC: I attended Pace as a full-time student and bartended at TGI Friday’s in Tarrytown. I believe my biggest struggle was managing my time. I had to maintain my job to pay for school, but I also worked hard to do well in my courses, and even played a little intramural basketball. My time was limited and I was restricted in what I could get involved in but I made it work and had an amazing experience.

DG: You have had a very diverse career so far. What drove you to explore all your different paths?

JPC: My love for public service and fate drove me to make my career decisions. I have always

“Pace Law students all seem to have this goal in common— we want to do more for our communities and leave an impact. ”  40

PA C E L AW A L U M N I M A G A Z I N E

Pace Law School Board of Visitors OFFICERS

Dennis J. Kenny, Esq.

Kathleen Donelli, Esq. ‘85 Board of Visitors Co-Chair

The Honorable Nita M. Lowey

Alfred E. Donnellan, Esq. ‘81 Board of Visitors Co-Chair

had a commitment to give back and I wanted to dedicate my skills to public service. My time in government was a great opportunity to participate in public policy and law making to positively influence the people of New York. My philosophy and goal is to make the world a better place. I have been extraordinarily blessed to have participated in so many great projects. At the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), I was able to focus on preserving and protecting our environment. As chief of staff to Governor Pataki, I was lucky to walk the halls of our capital every day to make a difference in New York State government. I have a lot of gratitude for the things I was able to be a part of and accomplish.

The Honorable Sondra M. Miller William M. Mooney III, Esq. ‘92 Professor Andrew C. W. Lund

MEMBERS Peter N. Bassano, Esq. ‘87

The Honorable Francis A. Nicolai

Christopher Carnicelli, Esq. ‘93

Richard L. O’Rourke, Esq. ‘81

V. Gerard Comizio, Esq. ‘80

Joseph M. Pastore III, Esq. ‘91

William D. Cotter, Esq.

John J. Rapisardi, Esq. ‘82

John P. Ekberg III, Esq. ‘90

Jerold R. Ruderman, Esq.

Michael C. Finnegan, Esq. ‘87

The Honorable Anthony A. Scarpino, Jr.

Christopher B. Fisher, Esq. ‘94 Peter S. Goodman, Esq. ‘86

The Honorable Alan D. Scheinkman

Philip M. Halpern, Esq. ‘80

Robert S. Tucker, Esq. ‘96

Bradford Hildebrandt

The Honorable C. Scott Vanderhoef ‘81

The Honorable Alexander Hunter The Honorable Linda Jamieson ‘79

Chauncey L. Walker, Esq. The Honorable Sam D. Walker

DG: What project are you most proud of?

JPC: As chief of staff to Governor Pataki, I was given the primary responsibility for the coordination of the rebuilding efforts in lower Manhattan. I was able to help rebuild the World Trade Center site. To be a part of the creation of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum was a very moving experience. The Freedom Tower and the museum tell the story of September 11.

The site is something special; it’s a real tribute to a lot of people and I am so honored to have been a part of it.

nalist in the 17 annual “Foreword Reviews” INDIEFAB Book of the Year Awards for Young Adult Fiction. This is Eric’s debut novel which “tells the story of how people re-evolve after a catastrophic asteroid strike into flyers, swimmers, and swift runners.

Keith M. Goldstein has joined the Law Firm of McNamee, Lochner, Titus & Williams, P.C. as of counsel.

Bridges and Tunnels. Matt remains an adjunct instructor at Pace Law School and the director of the ICC Moot. He was also recently elected to the executive board of the United Nations Association - NY (UNA-NY).

Peter A. Dumas was on the Today Show. He is representing Lyle Mitchell, the husband of Joyce Mitchell who was involved in the prison break from Clinton Correction Facility in upstate New York.

DG: What advice do you have for soon to be graduates?

JPC: Pace Law students all seem to have this goal in common—we want to do more for our communities and leave an impact. Aspire to make a difference by being hardworking, persistent, and passionate. Do your best to make a difference in the lives of the people you live with.

Drew is managing editor of the “Pace Environmental Law Review” and is a candidate for the Environmental Law Certificate. In the fall, she will be working as an associate for Keane and Beane, P.C. in White Plains practicing land use and municipal law. Drew looks forward to building her career and hopes to make a difference in her community while doing so.

Bridget A. Short j oined Fox Rothschild LLP as a partner in their New York office. Her practice areas are copyrights, intellectual property, IP litigation, patent prosecution & transactions, and trademarks.

David P. Steinberger j oined Lewis Roca Rothgerber LLP in their environmental and natural resources practice. He is a partner based out of their Denver office.

1999

Matthew Brotmann i s now assistant general counsel at MTA

Jeffrey B. Durocher i s senior counsel with Iberdrola Renewables, LLC in Portland, OR. He graduated with a certificate in environmental law and notes that he was inspired by his work at the Environmental Litigation Clinic and with Professor Nolon. He also fondly remembers Professor James Fishman because of his “entertaining contracts and corporations classes” in which he does his fair share of work in those practice areas as well. Jeffrey is raising two boys in Portland.

SPRING 2016

41

CLASS NOTES Kalon Leadership Scholarship Day on February 21 at Bethany College.

2000

John W. Furst is an associate with the firm of Catania, Mahon, Milligram and Rider PLLC. The firm was recently chosen to represent the interests of the Village of Cold Spring. John will handle Cold Spring’s legal affairs.

Dean F. Emmons is the deputy chief of staff for the Office of Principal Legal Advisor within the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Stephen J. Riccardulli j oined Norton Rose Fulbright as partners in the firm’s New York office.

Anna (Marciano) Romanella spoke at the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) Advertising Law & Public Policy Conference in Washington, D.C. on March 31. Anna spoke on “Advertising in the Age of Review Sites.” Anna is assistant general counsel at Heineken USA.

Elizabeth Verrier has been named general counsel for Lending.com.

As chief legal officer, she will be responsible for providing legal guidance to the company’s board of directors and senior management, and will oversee all legal and compliance matters for the company and its subsidiaries. Elizabeth delivered the keynote address for the 31st annual

torneys Returning to the Legal Profession” published in the “New York Law Journal.” Lucia is a partner at Cuddy & Feder and a member of Pace Law School’s alumni board.

2001

Penelope J. Barnett i s now assistant vice president, Claims SubstantiationAmericas at L’Oreal. Prior to this she was associate general counsel in food law/product compliance with Danone North America.

Basil Seggos was nominated by Gov. Andrew Cuomo to serve as commissioner for the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.

2002

Kelley Mikulak made partner at her firm, Stern Keiser & Panken, LLP. She will continue to concentrate in the areas of corporate transactions, estate planning and real estate.

Maiaklovsky Preval f ormed the Maiaklovsky Law Firm, PLLC.

2003

John L. Galgano has been serving as general counsel and chief of staff for the AMDA College and Conservatory of the Performing Arts for the past two years.

Lucia Chiocchio had her article “Harness the Experience of At-

Heis Law Office in Seoul, Korea as a foreign attorney.

Samantha L. Riley joined Nicolaides Fink Thorpe Michaelides Sullivan LLP as a partner in their newly opened White Plains office.

Michael D. Hall joined Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney as a shareholder.

He focuses his practice on complex litigation, and has experience in class actions and other areas of law.

Previously, he was with McDermott Will & Emery.

2004

Emily Collins received Pace Law School’s 2014 Nicholas A. Robinson Award for Alumni Achievement.

Emily founded the organization, Fair Shake Environmental Legal Services, where she is the executive director and managing attorney.

Sean M. Lynn i s the Delaware House of Representative’s prime sponsor to repeal the state’s death penalty. During his time at Pace, Sean took Professor Michael Mushlin’s prisoners rights course. Sean is a Democratic member of the House, representing District 31.

Dev B. Viswanath r eceived a proclamation from the New York City Council in October 2014, on the eve of the Diwali Celebrations at City Hall. The proclamation was for contributions to the City of New York and community service.

IN MEMORIAM Jonathan Jervis Lanman, a magna cum laude graduate in Pace Law’s Class of 2004, died on April 19, 2015. Prior to attending law school, Jonathan was an English teacher, soccer coach, and had a very successful career in publishing. He had recently retired from the practice of law and was with the law firm of Walsh & Amicucci LLP at the time of his retirement.

Robert L. Simis, a member of Pace Law’s Class of 1982, died on May 13, 2015.

42

PA C E L AW A L U M N I M A G A Z I N E

Scott V. Papp is an attorney with Lowey Dannenberg Cohen & Hart, P.C. His practice focuses on securities fraud litigation, shareholder rights, and complex commercial litigation in federal and state courts.

Jinhi Park taught international business law as a full time lecturer at Pai Chai University in Korea after nine years of teaching as well as working as a foreign legal consultant/attorney for E.M. Hwang & Partners in the trademark department. In March, Jinhi started working as a partner at

Jennifer Ann Vorhies was named a New Leader of the Bar in 2015 by the “New Jersey Law Journal.”

She is a partner with Florio Perrucci Steinhardt & Fader.

2005

Jessica H. Astrof (along with others) filed a lawsuit against Hasidic

Pace Law School Alumni Association Board of Directors

rabbis and synagogues in Brooklyn on behalf of Alliance to End Chickens as Kaporos.

Stacey Bliagos i s now executive director of Business Link, NYC HRA/ DSS. Megan R. Brillault o rganized and moderated the webinar “Straight Talk from the Female Bench: How to Succeed in the Courtroom” which took place on April 21. Megan is a principal at Beveridge & Diamond PC. Ruth Noemí Colón was appointed vice president of corporate shared services for the New York Power Authority (NYPA) by Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

Janice Dean has returned to legal practice after a rewarding year connecting with many alumni as Dean Yassky’s chief of staff. Janice will serve as deputy counsel at the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) in Albany. She looks forward to strengthening the upstate New York alumni contingent and reminds alumni to keep sharing their updates with Pace!

Janice was also elected to a three year term on the executive committee of the New York State Bar Association Environmental Section as a member at large. She also co-authored an article published in “Environmental Law in New York” entitled “Too Early or Too Late? Statutes of Limitations in Hazardous Waste and Oil Spill Claims.”

lactation accommodation in airports, a version of which was introduced by State Sen. Kimberly Lightford as Senate Bill 344.

Carlisle McLean was appointed

by Maine governor Paul LePage to serve on the Maine Public Utilities Commission (PUC). The PUC is an agency that plays a key role in energy matters that are part of Gov. LePage’s policy priorities. Carlisle became Gov. LePage’s chief legal counsel in 2013. Prior to that, she practiced with Preti Flaherty in environmental, land use and climate strategy law.

Gail Wilder has continued to work in her field as a senior executive for a health insurance company. Gail uses her legal training every day, as she interprets benefit documents as a routine part of her job.

2006

Danielle Bifulci Kocal had her article “Creating an Asynchronous Distance Learning Class” published in “The Learning Curve,” which is the publication for the Academic Support section of the American Association of Law Schools.

Nicholas E. Bowers recently celebrated five years of his firm, The Law Office of Nicholas E. Bowers, PLLC, being in business.

In 2014, Nicholas closed numerous transactions on the purchases and sales of co-ops, condos and houses in New York City, Long Island and Westchester. He also continued to conduct commercial lease reviews and negotiations and managed numerous real estate litigations.

Jason S. Herman is currently deputy counsel at the New York City School Construction Authority.

Jennifer A. Lofaro was promoted to partner at Bleakley Platt & Schmidt, LLP. She advises and represents regional and national institutional lenders and developers, as well as individual and corporate borrowers, in residential and commercial real estate transactions.

Emily N. Masalski drafted legislation in Illinois that would provide

Michael T. Goldstein became the president of the New York County Medical Society. He also drafted resolutions that were adopted by Medical Society of the State of New York House of Delegates. Michael will be giving a course this fall at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Ophthalmology about the legal structures that physicians can use to remain in independent practice.

OFFICERS

David Haimi, Esq. ‘12

Stephen J. Brown, Esq. ‘04 Alumni Association President

Mary Clare Haskins, Esq. ‘08

Michael A. Calandra Jr., Esq. ‘05 Alumni Association Vice President

Adele Lerman Janow, Esq. ‘90 Diana Bunin Kolev, Esq. ‘05 Christina A. Kozachek, Esq. ‘15

Jennifer L. Gray, Esq. ‘06 Alumni Association Secretary

Michael LaMagna, Esq. ‘07

MEMBERS

Hon. Carole Princer Levy ‘83

James M. Lenihan, Esq. ‘91

Patricia Bisesto, Esq. ‘92

Caesar Lopez, Esq. ‘12

Lucia Chiocchio, Esq. ‘01

Joseph M. Martin, Esq. ‘91

Adam Ciffone, Esq. ‘11

Lt. Col. Joseph W. Mazel, Esq. ‘97

Aliciamarie E. Falcetta, Esq. ‘99

Mark Meeker, Esq., Dec. ‘09

Hon. Sandra A. Forster ‘79

Raymond Perez, Esq. ‘00

Michael A. Frankel, Esq. ‘03

Christopher M. Psihoules, Esq. ‘12

James A. Garvey III, Esq. ‘80

Joseph Ruhl, Esq. ‘90

Michael G. Gilberg, Esq. ‘07

John A. Sarcone III, Esq. ‘95

Lisa E. Gladwell, Esq. ‘10

Judson K. Siebert, Esq. ‘85

Michael T. Goldstein, MD, Esq. ‘06

Dawn M. Warren, Esq. ‘01

Christine Love-Hillman and her family were featured in a Mother’s Day 2015 spread in “People Magazine.”

Sharif Nesheiwat is in-house counsel for the United States Department of Homeland Security.

Rosario (“Russ”) M. Patane was promoted to shareholder at Golden Rothschild Spagnola Lundell Boylan & Garubo, P.C.

2007

Neal E. Kumar is an associate in the Washington, D.C. office of Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP. In October 2014, he married Sweta Lamichhane.

Kevin Page was featured as the Safe Passage Attorney of the Week. Safe Passage Project is a not-for-profit that addresses the legal needs of indigent immigrant youth living in New York. Kevin is partner with O’Connor Redd LLP. Richard I. Pohlman was named the interim executive director of the Thurgood Marshall Academy in Washington, D.C. Cari B. Rincker published an article on BeefMagazine.com, “Thinking of leasing bulls? 17 things to consider when writing the lease.” Cari has her own firm, Rincker Law PLLC.

Jennifer L. Stewart a nd her family were featured in a Mother’s Day 2015 spread in “People Magazine.”

Jennifer is an associate with Cantor, Epstein & Mazzola, LLP in New York City.

Joshua Verleun i s senior legal editor environmental with Thomson Reuters.

2008

Jason T. Komninos was elected to the position of senior legislative coordinator of the New Jersey State Bar Association Municipal Court Practice Section. Mr. Komninos previously served as junior legislative coordinator from 2014-2015.

Erika C. Otocka has joined Ivey, Barnum & O’Mara. She will be representing individuals in all aspects of family and matrimonial law.

Previously, she practiced with the Law Offices of Gary I. Cohen, P.C. in Stamford, CT.

SPRING 2016

43

CLASS NOTES

Penelope Barnett ’01 Rana Abihabib, 3L, interviewed Pace Law alumna Penelope Barnett, assistant vice president of claims substantiation at L’Oreal Americas. Here is their conversation:

Andrea M. Roberts has joined McGlinchey Stafford PLLC as an associate. She practices in commercial litigation and consumer financial services litigation.

Jason C. Scott has joined the law firm of Sholes & Miller. He will focus on health care, commercial litigation, and criminal matters.

County, New York as an assistant county attorney/contract manager.

Brenda L. Hernandez was recently married and became co-director of the Boston Doula Project. She is currently the associate director for Academic and Multicultural Affairs Business at Boston University School of Law.

Alexander Turner has joined Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough LLP as an associate and will focus his practice on class action and mass tort litigation, along with commercial, medical liability, and product liability litigation.

Melissa A. Manna-Williams j oined Rusk, Wadlin, Heppner, & Martuscello, LLP as an associate.

Alisandra B. Carnevale w as elected to the board of directors for the Pennington Business and Professional Association. She is an attorney concentrating in family and divorce law at The Law Office of Alisandra B. Carnevale.

William Diaz was cited as a “scholar” by the United Nations Security Council for his writings in the area of sanctions and asset freezing for Al-Qaida and associated individuals.

William is an attorney with Laura Devine Solicitors in London.

Jonathan T. Engel has been appointed an adjunct faculty member at Dutchess Community College.

Jonathan continues to serve Ulster

44

PB: I became a lawyer by accident. As an undergrad, I was a marketing major and during college I took a job as a paralegal. My plan was to work in the legal department and transition my way to the marketing department. No one warned me that it is extremely difficult to transition between departments. After college, I worked in the legal departments of various companies for nine years before I decided to go to law school.

RA: What made you go to law school?

2009

Anne M. Carpenter is an associate with Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP. She co-authors an article annually with firm partner Steve Solow regarding environmental crime enforcement in Bloomberg BNA. Anne also spoke on the American Bar Association’s Section of Environment, Energy, and Resources Constitutional Law Committee panel regarding the recent SCOTUS Omnicare decision.

RA: How did you become a lawyer?

Lane Marmon joined HHG & Company, a financial planning firm, as a director. She was previously a senior associate at Rutkin, Oldham & Griffin, LLC. Henry Mascia argued in front of the New York State Court of Appeals in February. Before issuing a decision, the Court ordered re-argument and Henry reargued the matter on June 2, 2015. The Court subsequently issued a decision in Henry’s favor.

Henry is currently an associate with Rivkin Radler LLP.

PB: My boss encouraged me to apply. My entire career was doing legal work and it was time that I became a lawyer myself. I enrolled in the evening program at Pace Law while I working full time at Colgate. After my first year of law school, I started working at Philip Morris International, now known as Altria, as a senior analyst.

I graduated in May of 2001 and stayed at Philip Morris International until December. They were relocating to Switzerland and the September 11th attacks had just happened and I decided to stay in the U.S. I volunteered at the New York City Bar Association (NYCBA), giving legal advice to people affected by the September 11th attacks who could not afford attorneys. After a few months, it turned into a staff attorney position where I provided advice to low income clients.

RA: Working with victims of 9/11 must have been difficult.

PB: It was very difficult. It was very emotional, and it tugged on the heart strings. It was the only job where those seeking counsel gave me hugs.

tice, Spear Intellectual Property Law (or “Spear IP”), where she will counsel entrepreneurial clients, creators, and businesses in connection with copyright, trademark, technology, and other intellectual property related legal issues.

Allyson (Rucinski) McKinstry is now an associate with Crowell & Moring, LLP. She is working in the firm’s New York office in the complex commercial litigation and insurance/reinsurance practice groups.

Alexander M. Shindler has started as an associate at Brody & Branch in New York City.

PA C E L AW A L U M N I M A G A Z I N E

Maria A. Spear has launched a new intellectual-property law prac-

Michael Stevens i s now associate general counsel (Structured Finance) at Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services.

ALUMNI PROFILE

RA: How did you make your way back into the corporate world?

PB: After working for the NYCBA, I was offered a position as lead counsel for Philip Morris USA, specializing in tobacco and food litigation. When the company relocated to Virginia, I took a position as a consulting attorney at GE, in the consumer lending/ banking division. When I went to Pernod Ricard, I initially started as a consultant working on distribution agreements and acquisitions, and stayed for seven years as Corporate & Senior Counsel. I kept growing at Pernod Ricard; I was legally responsible for the management and oversight of corporate finance projects, global commercial contracts and litigation, and marketing and advertising.

RA: Seems like things came full-circle; you started as a marketing major and ended up working in the field as an attorney. What is it like to be the attorney managing marketing and advertising for a company?

PB: It did! During my career at Pernod Ricard, I worked in Paris for a full year with a publicly traded company of Pernod Ricard USA. When social media marketing launched, it really affected our company. I got to work with celebrities, advising them during sponsorship events. I worked at Danone, specializing in marketing and intellectual property.

Now, I work at L’Oréal Americas as the Assistant Vice President of Claims Substantiation, managing claim approvals for the entire L’Oréal Brand and overseeing consumer class actions. The position has an international component that makes the job interesting. This role allows me to be more creative; on occasion, I see my changes or ideas incorporated into a television commercial.

RA: Attorneys in the corporate world are known as those who always say “no” and put limits on business ideas and ventures. How do you overcome that stereotype?

2010 Elizabeth A. Borrelle is now an assistant state attorney with the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office in Miami, FL. Joseph A. Marutollo began working as an assistant United States attorney in the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York. He is assigned to the Civil Division.

PB: I find different ways to say the word “no.” You want to listen to others so you can understand the end game and give good advice. It requires patience to work with marketing people because sometimes you have to modify their creative ideas. You have to learn to be reasonable, and find a way (legally) for the marketers and the company to be happy.

RA: Is there any specific advice that you would give to law students?

PB: Because I had an accidental legal career, my best advice is to stay open and not limit yourself.

Sometimes you have to partake in jobs that are stepping stones to get to where you want to be. The more experiences you have, the more you have to offer. Network and keep in touch with a handful of people from every job you have held. Slowly, a circle of people who keep an eye out for you (and viceversa) starts to form, and it will lead you to unique friendships and sometimes new opportunities.

Rana Marie Abihabib hopes to work in international commercial arbitration or securities litigation.

Previously, he worked for the New York City Law Department in the Special Federal Litigation Division.

Susan Payne Mulliken was promoted to assistant general counsel at Mercy College. She has worked at Mercy since 2012 in a contract management position within the School of Health and Natural Sciences. She is very excited to take on this challeng-

ing new role. In personal news, in January 2015, Susan and her husband welcomed their third daughter, Kelly Shannon, who joins big sisters Erin and Clare.

Helen Okoronko (LLM) a ccepted the position of assistant to the general counsel at Fox International Channels and became engaged to Roberto Pirozzi (2010 LLM). She met Roberto on Pace Law School’s campus! Prior to moving to Rome,

she worked for over two years as a customs and international trade attorney at the Manhattan based office of Sandler, Travis and Rosenberg PA. Joshua A. Roman was offered and accepted a position as law clerk to the Hon. A. Kathleen Tomlinson, United States Magistrate Judge, E.D.N.Y. The clerkship began in the fall of 2015 and concludes in the fall of 2017.

SPRING 2016

45

ALUMNI PROFILE

CLASS NOTES Caesar Lopez ’12 Caesar Lopez, associate general counsel for Major League Soccer, took some time out to talk with current Pace Law student Brieanne Scully, who hopes to follow a similar career path as Lopez: BS: You were part of the group that created PIPSELF (Pace Intellectual Property, Sports & Entertainment Law Forum). How did that come about?

CL: I began law school determined to pursue corporate law. During orientation, though, I remember walking by the table for SEALS (Sport & Entertainment Arts Law Society) and thought, “I didn’t even think about going to law school to work in sports.”

I found that I could blend the law with my love for sports. I then found that some law schools had sport and entertainment journals and it seemed our students should be able to participate in the scholarly discussion of these current topics. I started talking to Chris Psihoules, a classmate of mine, and we created a plan—it’s going to be sports, it’s going to be entertainment, it’s going to be intellectual property. Jenni Wiser and Kristin Luciano were also interested in this area of law. Among the four of us, we put together the first issue and took it to the Law School administration. The following year, we were able to get more people to join us. I think I was lucky to have classmates who were not only supportive, but who also wanted to be part of a team. Chris and I still serve as advisors to PIPSELF. BS: How did you make the transition from a law student to your first job as in-house counsel with Beiersdorf, an international consumer products company?

CL: That was a transition that was a long time in the making. From my first semester, I was focused on obtaining an in-house position. I made every attempt to get the practical experience necessary and really focused on how I was going to

make myself valuable to an organization. During my last semester, I wanted to do a corporate externship. I looked at Beiersdorf and realized it had a fairly new legal department with only one attorney who was responsible for the U.S. division of the company. It offered a unique opportunity to forge my own path and add value to the company.

As an intern, I took on responsibilities that were beyond the original scope of the work. Toward the end of my term, I decided to be bold and went to the general counsel and proposed why it would be important to hire me. Fortunately, she agreed.

BS: How has Pace impacted your career?

CL: Pace Law School allowed me the freedom to carve out my niche. It allowed me the flexibility to build a transactional law focus combined with classes that suited my interests. With varied course content and the experiential learning, I figured out what I really wanted to do.

“Pace Law School allowed me the freedom to carve out my niche. It allowed me the flexibility to build a transactional law focus combined with classes that suited my interests.” 

46

PA C E L AW A L U M N I M A G A Z I N E

BS: You’ve stayed connected through the Pace Alumni Association where you are a Board Member. Why is that important to you to maintain your connection with Pace?

CL: I think this stems, in part, from having served as the SBA president where it was my goal to have alumni more connected to the student body. When I was offered the opportunity to be on the Alumni Board, I accepted because it allowed me to lead by example. It’s important to come back, give back and help the current students get to where you are. That sort of mentorship will only create a stronger school, a stronger culture and a stronger network. When prospective law students are looking at different schools, they see Pace and see not only is it full of students and professors, but it’s full of alumni.

They feel like they would be joining a family of professionals. That makes the school stronger. To the extent that you can bring alumni and students closer, it’s really a value to all.

BS: What would be your advice for current students?

CL: Understand the importance of networking.

You have to go into law school understanding you are a business. You, as an individual, are a business. You need to market yourself to prospective employers. You need to establish meaningful connections. If I hadn’t established meaningful connections within Pace and outside of Pace, I wouldn’t have received the call from Major League Soccer. It’s important for people to get to know who you are as a person and feel confident that you can be an effective member of the team. And, in order to figure out what you want, you need to learn from others and network with attorneys in a variety of positions.

2L Brieanne Scully is at the top of her class with a focus on sport and entertainment law. In addition to working as the student assistant in the Pace Law Admissions office, Brie has spent the fall and spring semesters interning for the WWE, Inc. She hopes to have another internship with a major sport organization.

2011 Christopher R. Cuomo was recently sworn in as acting public administrator for Westchester County.

Christine E. Goodrich joined the New York office of Faruqi & Faruqi, LLP. She continues to practice securities arbitration and litigation.

Gloribelle J. Perez i s a court attorney for Manhattan surrogate Rita Mella. She is also president of the Dominican Bar Association.

2012

Catherine Cioffi joined the Ossining Daily Voice as a community advisor. Catherine serves as director of public relations at Mercy College, responsible for media outreach and social media.

Anthony Desiato (’12) a nd Stephanie A. Chow (’09) became engaged on May 8. Both Anthony and Stephanie are Pace Law alumni and Pace Law staff members. They are looking forward to their 2016 wedding!

Sarah Hollender finished two years as an Equal Justice Works AmeriCorp Legal Fellow in the Storm Response Unit of NYLAG aiding low-income New Yorkers in civil legal services stemming from Superstorm Sandy, and has become a staff attorney in the Housing Project at NYLAG. Pooja Jaitly married Jonathan Scott Geller on Saturday, May 16, 2015 in Greenwich, CT. Pooja is a litigation associate with Farber, Pappalardo & Carbonari.

Caesar A. Lopez spoke at the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) Advertising Law & Public Policy Conference in Washington, D.C. on March 31. His topic was “How to Negotiate a Client-Agency Agreement.” Caesar is legal counsel, USA at Beiersdorf.

Kurtis McManus i s the producer of “SUPER! The Musical.” The musical played the Midtown International Theatre Festival.

Taylor M. Palmer has joined Cuddy & Feder LLP as an associate in land use practice.

Craig Relles was featured in “The National Jurist” on how the Pace Community Law Practice (PCLP) helped him get his start as a solo practitioner. Craig’s firm is named the Law Office of Craig Relles and he was one of the first to take part in the PCLP as a legal fellow.

Radina R. Valova (’12, LLM ’13) has accepted the position of staff attorney at the Pace Energy and Climate Center.

2013

Ibrahim Abohamra started the Abohamra Law Firm upon graduating from Pace. Subsequently, after reconnecting with friends, the law firm of Sirotkin Varacalli & Hamra LLP was founded. Ibrahim represents criminal defendants in a variety of contexts. The firm also handles many other areas of law.

Pouyan Darian (’13) and Stephanie Ramos (’14), fellows from the Pace Community Law Practice (PCLP), achieved a notable win on behalf of a client who came to PCLP seeking the stability of her legal immigration status. Pouyan and Stephanie offered affordable representation and good counsel and the client was granted permanent resident status.

Nicole M. DiGiose has joined the Law Offices of Gary I. Cohen, P.C. Anthony DiPietro ,who specializes in post-conviction wrongful conviction litigation, together with wellknown Westchester attorney Herman Kaufman, recently secured the release of a Westchester man who was wrongfully convicted based

SPRING 2016

47

CLASS NOTES on perjured testimony by Yonkers police officers. Jamar Smythe, 30, was charged with and convicted of possession of narcotics that were allegedly lying in plain view in his car, and was serving a 15 year jail sentence. The two Yonkers police officers who arrested him—claiming they were justified in arresting him for a traffic violation—came under investigation for perjury.

Anthony’s re-investigation of the case convinced the Westchester District Attorney’s office to vacate the conviction.

Lindsay M. Farrenkopf i s now the manager of Partner Success at Datto, Inc. Joseph E. Fornadel published his article entitled “The Community Risk and Resiliency Act: Building on the New York State Legislature’s Climate Change Framework” in the January/February volume of “New York Zoning Law and Practice Report,” published by Thomson Reuters. Joseph is a senior court attorney at the New York Court of Appeals.

Justin M. Guido s tarted working as a prosecutor at the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s office immediately after graduation. Since then, he has had approximately 20 jury trials, wrote an appeal, and continues to litigate on a daily basis. He recently obtained a guilty verdict in a case that was reported on by the “Miami Herald.”

focused on serving the immigrant communities of Westchester and Fairfield counties. The firm, Lacroix Ramos, Attorneys at Law, LLP, is based in Yonkers, NY. The firm provides representation to immigrant clients while working to educate immigrant communities and reform immigration law.

Sarah Holcombe started working at the Law Offices of John L. Di Masi, P.A. in January, 2015.

Seth Levy recently accepted a position at Cabanillas and Associates, P.C. as an associate attorney in charge of managing the immigration department. The firm is one of the largest Hispanic law firms in the Metro New York area with over 8,000 clients and nine offices around New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut.

Pace Law

Have you recently changed firms, careers, or made partner?

What is your practice area? Do you want to connect to other alumni colleagues within your practice area? Are you married? Do you have children? Where are you living?

Your Law School wants to receive these updates and help connect with you and connect you with others.

Let us know by e-mail, mail, or phone.

Email: plsalumni@law.pace.edu Phone: 914-422-4079 US Mail: Pace Law

Office of Development & Alumni Relations

78 North Broadway

White Plains, NY 10603 Career/Personal ___________________________________ ________________________________________________ ________________________________________________ ________________________________________________ Name ___________________________________________

John D. Scherer has joined Masini Law Group PC in Garden City, NJ as an associate attorney.

Kerriann Stout and Pouyan Darian’s firm, Darian Stout, LLP was incubated through the Pace Community Law Practice. The firm assists their clients to apply for asylum, work permits, visas, green cards (permanent residence), and naturalization (citizenship). They advocate on behalf of their clients in immigration courts to prevent deportation. They have recently had a variety of success stories involving their advocacy on behalf of their clients.

2014

Employer ________________________________________

Practice Area _____________________________________ Year and Degree ___________________________________ Phone ____________________ Email __________________ Address Change ____Yes ____No

Photos are welcome!

48

PA C E L AW A L U M N I M A G A Z I N E

Christian D. McCarthy is an associate with Heidell Pittoni Murphy & Bach LLP. Matthew A. Pellegrine joined the Air Force in the Judge Advocate General’s Office (JAG) in March, 2015 and was recently promoted to captain.

Christopher L. Roma is an associate with Hinman, Howard & Kattell, LLP. He is part of their business and corporate law and commercial litigation practice groups.

Title ____________________________________________

You can also update your information online by visiting the Pace Law website at www.law.pace.edu; simply click on the Alumni tab and then the Alumni Update Form.

Benjamin S. Lowenthal h as joined the firm of Harrington, Ocko & Monk, LLP in White Plains, NY. He practices in the areas of commercial litigation, corporate and business law, and real estate law.

Miriam D. Lacroix and Stephanie Lynn Ramos launched a law firm

2015

Leigh A. Ellis was profiled on Westfair Online.

Pace Law

Reunion 2016 To celebrate the classes of 1981, 1986, 1991, 1996, 2001, 2006, and 2011 Saturday, October 22, 2016 6:00pm to 9:00pm at The Ritz-Carlton New York, Westchester Three Renaissance Square White Plains, NY 10601 Join us at an elegant cocktail reception as we commemorate these milestones with classmates, faculty, and friends.

Please direct any inquires to Kelsey Coomber at (212)-346-1287 or developmentevents@pace.edu

Elisabeth Haub School Of Law at Pace University 78 North Broadway White Plains, NY 10603 www.law.pace.edu

Non-profit Org. US Postage PAID Pace University