Law school keeps pace with the times - Westfair Communications

Pace University School of Law this fall will offer the first master”™s degree program in real estate law in the metropolitan region and only the third in the nation.

Pace officials said the degree program will provide an interdisciplinary mix of law, business and dispute resolution taught by both tenured professors and experienced real estate law practitioners. The program also will draw on advisory groups of industry leaders and their attorneys. It is expected to create opportunities for law school graduates, seasoned practitioners and lawyers looking to redirect their legal careers.

Program courses will include basic topics such as real estate transactions and finance, commercial leasing, construction law and income taxation of real estate transactions. Those will be supplemented by fusion courses such as environmental regulation of real estate development, the lawyer”™s role in large-scale real estate development, environmental commercial transactions and the legal management of urban environments. A course on real estate workouts will explore the explosion of bankruptcies due to the subprime mortgage fiasco and the lawyer”™s role in adjusting financial obligations and expectations regarding existing financial arrangements.

“Real estate law has become an area in which practitioners face issues that go beyond what they were taught in three years of law school,” said Seth A. Davis, a real estate attorney at Elias Group L.L.P in Rye who will teach in the program. “Today”™s real estate specialist must know not only the real estate field but how it interacts with tax, corporate, environmental, land use and many other areas of the law. An L.L.M. in real estate law provides the opportunity to study these areas and interactions in depth and to gain specialized knowledge beyond what a traditional J.D. curriculum offers or a law firm associate can hope to gain.”

“New York”™s real estate market is the richest and most complex in the nation,” said Pace University President Stephen J. Friedman, a former senior partner at Debevoise and Plimpton L.L.P. “This new L.L.M. program will prepare lawyers to thrive in it by providing access to cutting-edge scholarship and practical experience.”

Full-time students will complete the 24-credit program in one year, while part-time students can finish in two years. Tuition for the 2008-09 year, for which applications are now open, will cost approximately $40,000 for the full-time program or $1,667 per credit for part-time degree candidates. Limited financial aid may be available, but students generally are expected to arrange to finance their own programs.

More information is available on the degree program Web site, www.law.pace.edu/realestate.html, or from the Office of Graduate Programs at (914) 422-4670 or from Professor Shelby D. Green at (914) 422-4421.