Speaking to an audience composed largely of fellow attorneys, Pace Law School Dean David Yassky called this “a crazy moment in the legal profession.” It is also “a pivotal moment,” he said.
Yassky, a former New York City Council member and former chairman of the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission as well as a constitutional law scholar, made his remarks on the changing profession as keynote speaker at the recent eighth annual Above the Bar Awards ceremony honoring Westchester attorneys on the Pace Law School campus.
A Yale Law School graduate, Yassky arrived on the White Plains campus this spring as the school”™s new dean. He was hired, said Richard L. Ottinger, dean emeritus of Pace Law School, with the expectation that he will make Pace “the law school of tomorrow” in much the same way he promoted the use of green taxis in New York during his four-year tenure in the Bloomberg administration.
Though change at law firms has not been as rapid as in newspaper publishing and other industries, said Yassky, “The best clients are more demanding than ever and expecting more value for their dollar than ever.” Firms are less able than ever before to train young lawyers on the job, he said.
At Pace, “It means our job is, more than it has ever been, to train students to be ready to go to work” with clinical training and skills that will allow young lawyers to start immediately in a practice.
From their first semester in law school, “I want to have our students be on the path to practice” in a specific area of the law, the dean said. Outside the classroom, students need to be connected to mentors and role models in the bar, he said.
Those connections are more easily made in Westchester, he suggested. After two months in his new post, “I have been struck forcefully by how close-knit the legal community is here in Westchester,” he said. “Not every legal community is like that so I”™m especially pleased to have joined that.”
In a society changed by technology, “The need for lawyers is greater than ever,” Yassky said. “That work is more important and more needed than ever. I remain very bullish about the legal profession being the moving force it has always been.”
An Above the Bar award winner as most promising student at Pace Law School, Desiree R. Salomone urged law firm partners to hire more social activists like her whose community engagement in justice causes might outshine their LSAT scores and law school transcripts.
Salomone, who had been studying for her state bar exam on the day of her award, urged firms “to take into account the importance of being a doer. If you have an opportunity to hire a doer instead of someone with a flashy resume, I”™d hope you do that,” she said.
Salomone said she graduates from law school with $190,000 in student debt. The high cost of a legal education is “taxing the next generation” of lawyers, she said.
“I hope as a profession we can change that” to broaden access to law schools by aspiring students who lack the financial means, she said.
Robert Feder, co-founding partner of Cuddy & Feder L.L.P. in White Plains, received this year”™s Pace Setter award.
“I”™ve had great joy from my profession,” said Feder, who marked 60 years as a lawyer in December.
Also accepting awards were these Westchester lawyers:
Most socially conscious: Mary Beth Q. Morrissey, an attorney in White Plains, founder and president of the Collaborative for Palliative Care and research fellow at the Fordham University Business School”™s Global Healthcare Innovation Management Center.
Leading in-house attorney: Laura Alemzadeh, general counsel at Kawasaki Rail Car Inc. in Yonkers.
Leading attorneys under 40: Salvatore M. DiCostanzo, partner at McMillan, Constabile, Maker & Perone L.L.P. in Larchmont and Yorktown Heights, and Jeffrey A. Lindenbaum, partner at Collen IP in Ossining.
“I”™ve found a practice and profession that I truly love, and that”™s why I”™ve been successful,” Lindenbaum said. The same might be said of his fellow Above the Bar award winners.
Would be nice if my daughter, a 2013 Pace Law grad and recent member of the NY Bar, could find a law job.