Sense of Place
ČâÂţÎÝ Law, ensconced in one of the world’s financial and cultural capitals, is an institution deeply informed by its prime urban location.
In a lower Manhattan office tower, an ČâÂţÎÝ Law alumna negotiates the financing of a multinational merger—before taking the subway to the Law School to field questions from students about another deal that just closed. Not far from Washington Square, a faculty member meets with the client he’s representing in a new copyright case. Clinic students present their first oral arguments during an immigration appeal in federal court; uptown, other students attend a committee meeting at the United Nations; and in the shadow of the High Line, an ČâÂţÎÝ Law extern researches legal issues at a start-up founded by a recent Law School graduate.
Since its inception, ČâÂţÎÝ Law has been seamlessly interwoven with the nation’s largest and most diverse city, a vibrant world capital of commerce and culture—creating a long-running dynamic of cross-pollination that continues to foster excellence in a broad spectrum of legal areas. ČâÂţÎÝ Law’s location—minutes from Wall Street, the cradle of American finance—has allowed it to cultivate robust specialties in business-related law, from compliance to tax to the burgeoning field of law and entrepreneurship. Then there’s the “world” part of “world capital,” reflected in New York City’s international flavor and outlook. It’s no accident that ČâÂţÎÝ Law is a long-standing leader in global and international law and in immigration law, constantly seeking fresh approaches to engage with a swiftly changing geopolitical landscape.
Equally significant are the specialties that help give the city its unique character: real estate law, informed by innovations that frequently originate in New York; public interest law, often aimed at addressing issues intrinsic to urban life; and intellectual property law, which—along with subspecialties including art law, entertainment law, and fashion law—help sustain dynamic industries that provide the city with its restless creative spark.
Albert Gallatin, one of New York University’s founders, envisioned an institution that was “in and of the city.” In 1835, in his organizing plan for the new university’s law school, founder Benjamin F. Butler wrote that “a Law School in the City of New York…to correspond with the advantages of its geographical position…should be organized upon an extensive scale.” The needs of the “great and growing metropolis,” Butler added, were “not to be satisfied by any halfway provisions.”
Law and Business
With the world’s two largest stock exchanges, the headquarters of more than 40 Fortune 500 companies, the biggest investment banks, and a total metropolitan economic output north of $2 trillion, New York is the leading global financial center. ČâÂţÎÝ Law students benefit from the expertise of not only full-time corporate law faculty at the top of the field but also “absolutely spectacular adjuncts,” in the words of , Martin Lipton Professor of Law and co-director of the Institute for Corporate Governance & Finance (ICGF). Among the practitioners who teach at the Law School are leading corporate law partners, two members of the Delaware Court of Chancery, and the former vice chairman of investment company BlackRock. “It is often the case [that] people hire out of their seminars,” says Rock. Outside the classroom, the ICGF convenes high-profile conversations about capital markets to which students are invited.
’86, Norma Z. Paige Professor of Law, focuses on white-collar crime and corporate compliance in her teaching and research and as faculty director of the Program on Corporate Compliance and Enforcement (PCCE). Bringing a steady stream of both federal regulators and corporate advisors to campus for productive exchanges, PCCE has provided a platform for Justice Department officials to announce important policy reforms.
“When I was [a Securities and Exchange Commission] commissioner,” says , Nathalie P. Urry Professor of Law and an ICGF co-director, “and I wanted to understand how the market was reacting to things we were doing, I found that out by coming back to ČâÂţÎÝ [for Law School discussions and events]…. The truth is, most important business decisions don’t get made in Washington. They’re made in New York by hardworking lawyers and their clients who are trying to explain to investors what they’re doing and why.” Jackson adds that “our courses are staffed not only by some of the finest securities practitioners, but also some of the best securities judges.”
ČâÂţÎÝ Law students taking courses at ČâÂţÎÝ Stern School of Business learn about real-life deals from the financial industry professionals who put them together. The Jacobson Leadership Program in Law and Business provides special mentoring by leading New York practitioners.
“You get to listen to people talk about these deals and learn from their perspective in a way that’s extraordinarily valuable to students—and, actually, to the faculty,” says Arlen. “It makes all of us better scholars, because we’re not doing ivory tower scholarship that is ungrounded from what’s really happening in our fields, but we’re deeply steeped in what is happening in the areas we care about.”
Public Interest Law
New York has been a bastion of social reform at least as far back as the Gilded Age, when photojournalist Jacob Riis exposed the miseries of tenement life and Theodore Roosevelt fought corruption in the New York City Police Department. The Legal Aid Society, the country’s oldest and largest legal aid provider, was founded in New York in 1876. Robert McKay, a former ČâÂţÎÝ Law dean, served as its president, and Steven Banks ’81 and Janet Sabel ’84 as its attorney in chief.
Launched in 1951, the Law School’s Root-Tilden-Kern Program facilitates the nation’s premier public service scholarship. The Arthur Garfield Hays Civil Liberties Program was founded in 1958 in honor of Hays, a longtime general counsel of the American Civil Liberties Union and an important civil liberties champion. The program has helped prepare more than 300 lawyers for civil liberties and civil rights work.
With guaranteed funding for all students who engage in public interest summer work and six career counselors at its Public Interest Law Center, the Law School taps effectively into New York’s vibrant public interest community, says Assistant Dean for Public Service Lisa Hoyes ’99, a Root-Tilden-Kern alumna. “At all levels of government and at nonprofits, there are ČâÂţÎÝ alumni at the helm and on hiring committees,” says Hoyes. “It makes networking and building community easy.”
Then there is ČâÂţÎÝ Law’s renowned array of more than 50 clinics and externships—everything from externing at the New York City Law Department to tackling Innocence Project exoneration litigation to working with assistant US attorneys in the Southern District of New York. , Margaret B. Hoppin Professor of Law and associate dean for experiential education and clinical programs, notes that New York gives students access to leading public and nonprofit organizations.
“We are meeting the needs of not only our students as they prepare to go out into legal practice,” says Archer, “but also the clients and communities that have been our partners in this work…. There are tensions here in New York City that exist from having some of the wealthiest people in the world, as well as some of the highest concentrations of poverty…. Working in New York City in the public interest space offers the opportunity to navigate these really complex issues and challenges.”
Intellectual Property Law
“New York City is one of the few places—maybe the only place—where such a variety of industries that use and rely on and are affected by intellectual property are located,” says , Walter J. Derenberg Professor of Intellectual Property Law and vice dean of intellectual life. She fires off a partial list: advertising, media, tech, finance, pharmaceuticals, music, television, publishing, fashion. “It’s not an exhaustive list, but it goes to show the wide range of intellectual property issues that arise in New York under patent law, copyright law, trademark law, trade secrecy laws, and right of publicity laws. It’s easy not to go too far and trip over intellectual property wherever you turn,” she says.
This local concentration of IP-reliant commerce is no accident, Fromer explains. “New York City is fast-paced, constantly changing and innovating…. [It] ends up being a hub for the type of creative thinking that intellectual property is designed to promote.”
That creativity, she adds, extends to IP lawyering in New York, which boasts many of the top attorneys in the field. ČâÂţÎÝ Law Trustee John Desmarais ’88, founding partner of Desmarais, is one of the nation’s most successful IP lawyers, having won $1.5 billion for Alcatel-Lucent at trial in a patent infringement case against Microsoft. Life Trustee Alfred Engelberg ’65 successfully challenged many pharmaceutical patents, facilitating early market entry for generic versions of important drugs, and also helped found ČâÂţÎÝ Law’s [see “Lifelong Innovator”].
Full-time IP faculty are also active practitioners. Among other cases, , Murray and Kathleen Bring Professor of Law, is defending artist Mason Rothschild in a federal trademark infringement suit brought by Hermès over Rothschild’s digital non-fungible token (NFT) renditions of the company’s Birkin bags. Professor , director of the Technology Law and Policy Clinic, collaborates with students in representing individuals, nonprofits, and consumer groups in IP matters. The clinic’s work has included working with a group of activists challenging patent monopolies on life-saving drugs and supporting an artist in a copyright case involving appropriation art and fair use. This year, Professor ’15 brings to the Law School his Science, Health, and Information Clinic, in which students’ work entails patent, trade secrecy, and privacy law, among other areas [see “Need to Know”].
The superabundance of IP law experts and industry leaders in New York is a rich resource for both students and faculty. Students benefit from an array of internship and externship opportunities. They also hear firsthand from visitors such as Major League Baseball Properties’ general counsel, the chief counsel for the New Yorker, and a lawyer who represented J.K. Rowling in a high-profile copyright infringement suit. “The fact that we can connect with people in every industry has been such a helpful learning experience—to have a sense of the issues on the ground and how things actually work,” says Fromer. “I’ve spent time at top fashion houses and talked to entertainment creators and people at tech companies constantly…. It really enhances what we get to do and get to learn as academics, and what we can bring to the classroom and put into our scholarship.”
Real Estate Law
Real estate remains a New York obsession, and no wonder: the estimated value of New York City’s high-stakes real estate market is in the neighborhood of $1.6 trillion. The city’s government devotes tremendous resources to real estate and housing—and probably no single figure in recent years has been more influential in those policies than ’83, Judge Edward Weinfeld Professor of Law and faculty co-director of ČâÂţÎÝ’s .
Been was New York City’s deputy mayor for housing and economic development from 2019 to 2021, after serving as commissioner of the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, the nation’s largest municipal housing agency. Her broad mandate as deputy mayor encompassed not just housing but other amenities—such as parks and the arts—that allow neighborhoods to thrive.
Been calls ČâÂţÎÝ Law’s real estate, zoning, and land use law cohort “the broadest and deepest faculty of any school in the nation.” The group includes , Max E. Greenberg Professor of Contract Law, and , William T. Comfort III Professor of Law, with curricular offerings such as Real Estate Transactions; the Cities Seminar; the Eviction Defense and Tenant Protection Clinic; and Been’s Colloquium on Law, Economics and Politics of Urban Affairs. This fall Been, along with Adjunct Professor Carol Rosenthal ’82, is launching a clinic in which students will represent faith-based organizations seeking to use their land for affordable housing.
The Furman Center, on the verge of its third decade, pursues research on housing finance and foreclosures, affordable housing, land use regulation, and neighborhood change. Many of the students who have worked there as research assistants have gone on to significant roles in government, academia, and the private sector. Former research fellow Shaun Donovan became US secretary of housing and urban development during the Obama administration.
“New York is certainly at the vanguard on city housing programs,” says Been. “Students can learn a lot about what’s [on] the cutting edge there…. Often New York City will see problems coming up before anybody else sees them, and so [the city] will be a little bit ahead of the curve in terms of solving them.”
International Law
To get to the iconic headquarters of the United Nations from ČâÂţÎÝ Law, just hop on the A train and transfer to the 7 at Times Square. , Herbert and Rose Rubin Professor of International Law, co-teaches a course on international organizations with Blanca Montejo LLM ’00, deputy chef de cabinet in the Office of the President of the UN General Assembly. “Law and diplomacy go together,” says Alvarez. “You can’t understand how lawyers function and what their job is at a place like the UN unless you understand what diplomats do.” Both , John Norton Pomeroy Professor of Law, and Professor ’99 have served or serve as UN special rapporteurs. Students tackle assignments for UN-affiliated organizations in the International Organizations Clinic; serve as fellows for the UN International Law Commission and clerk at the UN’s International Court of Justice; and work in the UN permanent missions of island and coastal states through the United Nations Diplomacy Clinic.
Alvarez underscores the impact of ČâÂţÎÝ Law’s location on its international offerings, such as the Hauser Global Law School Program or the two LLM degrees focused on international law. “We wouldn’t be able to do the programs we do, we wouldn’t have the connections we do but for the people who come through [the city],” he says. And New York helps make the Law School a forum for international debate, as Professor JSD ’20 notes. Interest in antitrust reform, particularly for tech markets, is surging throughout the globe, he explains. “Here at ČâÂţÎÝ we are helping to shape the conversation,” he says, “welcoming antitrust enforcers and scholars from around the world to teach and speak here in New York, hosting conferences and events on everything from tech antitrust to merger-law reforms, and engaging regularly with governments and scholarly counterparts around the world.”
Immigration Law
New York is a city of immigrants, who for generations have built much of the city’s prosperity and cultural vibrancy. Today, New York has the largest foreign-born population of any city in the world, with as many as 800 languages being spoken. At the same time, immigrants in New York and elsewhere have often grappled with xenophobia and legal obstacles. For more than 25 years, the Immigrant Rights Clinic has represented individual clients and community groups in agencies and federal courts.
Co-founded by Professor ’81, the clinic is now directed by Professor ’05, who was a student in the clinic when Morawetz led it. Morawetz, in turn, is teaching the new Crimmigration Clinic, which is focused on noncitizens in the criminal legal system who face immigration consequences of convictions. Das also oversees the ČâÂţÎÝ Immigrant Defense Initiative, a project launched in 2017 to provide immigration law aid to ČâÂţÎÝ Law community members. It is the students, however, who do much of the work in the clinics: writing briefs, strategizing, and arguing before judges. “What we try to do is teach our students to leave no stone unturned,” says Morawetz. Their many wins speak for themselves.
The Immigrant Rights Clinic continues to evolve to respond to shifts in immigration policy. “When the clinic started, there were very few jobs in immigration law,” says Morawetz. “Our students have helped build the immigrant rights space, and today new students are much more likely to be pursuing careers in immigration law.”
Law and Entrepreneurship
Lori Hoberman ’89, LLM ’91 began her career as a tax lawyer at Pillsbury, Madison & Sutro, but in the late 1990s, she became intrigued by New York’s emerging Silicon Alley, a counterpart to California’s Silicon Valley. After helping create venture capital funds on the tax side, she worked with her first start-up and decided to shift her focus to venture capital and emerging companies, a new area at the time. Since then, New York has continued to grow into a leading technology hub encompassing telecommunications, biotechnology, fintech, new media, and AI, bolstered by access to extensive intellectual capital.
The Law School’s Entrepreneurship & Venture Capital (EVC) Program, launched in 2018, provides resources for students and alumni working at the intersection of law, innovation, and entrepreneurship. The EVC Program invests in alumni-founded startups—such as TrialKit, a legal tech platform simplifying case material management and discovery, and Sabai, a sustainable furniture company, both based in New York—as well as facilitating student internships at alumni-run companies and hosting events, including a recent career panel where Hoberman spoke. The EVC Program’s investment fund is the only one of its kind at a top law school.
In 2014, Hoberman decided to create her own law firm, focused entirely on start-ups and venture capital. She sees New York as having limitless possibilities. “Everything’s here,” she says. “There are dozens of venture capital funds, so the funding sources are here. The entrepreneurs are here, the opportunities are here, so it’s a ripe environment to explore the practice of venture capital and entrepreneurship.”
Art, Fashion, and Entertainment Law
New York City is the capital of the global art market, and its epicenter is the cluster of Chelsea galleries about a dozen blocks from ČâÂţÎÝ Law, says , Emily Kempin Professor of Law. Her specialty, art law, can involve intellectual property, free speech, contracts, torts, international law—and billions of dollars. “I use the city in my teaching in any number of ways,” she says. As part of her perennially popular Art Law course, Adler takes her students on gallery crawls so they can see works up close by artists such as Jeff Koons and Richard Serra that have triggered high-profile lawsuits. “That perspective on what we’re studying is unparalleled, I think,” says Adler. “I can’t imagine another city where that can happen.”
ČâÂţÎÝ Law, a stiletto heel’s throw from the Garment District and SoHo boutiques, is a longtime neighbor of the city’s fashion industry. In Fashion Law and Business, taught by Adjunct Professor JD/MBA ’97, students learn about a specialization that involves intellectual property, corporate law, labor law, trade law, and even environmental law. Hand, co-founder of fashion law boutique Hand Baldachin & Associates, strives to stay abreast of current developments in the industry, such as sustainability concerns raised by “fast fashion” and new worries about tariffs. He underscores the importance of studying and networking in New York in shaping his career. “I often will tell students, if you’re interested, go to Fashion Week events,” he says. “Go mix with people who are in the industry.”
With its deep-rooted theatrical, musical, cinematic, and publishing traditions, New York has inspired many ČâÂţÎÝ Law alumni to pursue the multifaceted specialty of entertainment law. “It’s intellectual property, it’s contracts, it’s copyright, it’s business, as well as criminal, trusts and estates, tax, real estate law, and so on,” says Rose Schwartz ’80, a partner at Franklin Weinrib Rudell + Vassallo, who has taught Entertainment Law at ČâÂţÎÝ Law for decades. Gerald Schoenfeld ’49 played a pivotal role in revitalizing Broadway as chairman of the Shubert Organization; more recently, ČâÂţÎÝ Law Trustee Marc Platt ’82 has been president of production at three movie studios and has produced successful films and Broadway shows such as Wicked and Purpose.
Lisa E. Davis ’85, an entertainment and sports law partner at Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz, notes that the origins of her career are very local. “I’m a New Yorker,” she explains. “I grew up going to the theater, going to see Alvin Ailey every Christmas, going to movies all the time, listening to lots of music.… I had always wanted to be a lawyer, and I realized in college that I could marry the two [passions] as an entertainment lawyer.”
Atticus Gannaway is senior writer at ČâÂţÎÝ Law.