Stephen E. Appell Both Cornell ILR School and Rutgers Law School prepared me well for a career in labor law, dedicated to the cause of workers’ rights and well-being. In 1968, I entered employment with the National Labor Relations Board and thereafter became a Trial Specialist. My legal service with the NLRB in Brooklyn was augmented by official capacities with the NLRB Union, including as national Executive Vice-President, in which I fought hard to advance the dignity and welfare of both our professional and support-staff employees. In 1980, I became a Supervisory Attorney with NLRB in New York. In 1985, I entered the private sector with firms representing unions and workers, becoming a partner in 1990. With the firms, I was particularly involved in NLRB proceedings, arbitrations, Federal-court litigation and collective bargaining. In 1997, I returned to New York NLRB, as Trial Specialist and mentor. After retirement from full-time work in 2004, I served “of counsel” to a union-side firm from 2005 to 2008. |
Bill Bender We were fortunate at Rutgers to be exposed to many of the cutting-edge ideas in constitutional litigation, as the nation was then struggling with the unfinished promises of the Wartime Amendments. |
Rita Bender I look back at my experiences at Rutgers with an understanding that they were unique. As students we had the benefit of some outstanding professors, and the opportunity to develop friendships which enriched our adult lives. |
Marc E. Berson Marc E. Berson is a dedicated and established lawyer, entrepreneur, and philanthropist with a focus in operating manufacturing, and service businesses and real estate development. He has been Chairman of The Fidelco Group and of the Fidelco Realty Group since he founded them in 1981. Under Mr. Berson’s leadership, Fidelco has completed many noteworthy transactions such as the acquisition of Modernfold, Inc. in 1985 which he sold to Maiden Lane Associates in 1990; and the 1986 acquisition of National Car Rental Systems, Inc., which at the time was the largest car rental system in the world. National was sold to General Motors Corporation in 1992. From 1995 when Kirker Enterprises was acquired until its sale to RPM Industries in 2012, Fidelco's primary corporate emphasis was in the custom contract manufacturing of nail enamel and other cosmetic products for major brands worldwide. Mr. Berson was Chairman of Kirker Enterprises, Inc., the world's largest producer of nail enamel, and of Clinical Formula, LLC, which manufactures dermatological products. Manufacturing facilities for these companies were located in New Jersey, California and Scotland. Mr. Berson was an active participant in the management of these and other businesses. Newark, N.J. One prime example is his acquisition, renovation and leasing of the 400,000-square foot 1 Washington Park office building, which has served as a spark to the resurgence of the city's North Broad Street corridor and activated a new gateway to the city's downtown. He worked hand-in-hand with Rutgers University's Newark campus in its efforts to build a new world-class business school in 1 Washington Park. Since the 1 Washington Park redevelopment, he has completed in Newark the redevelopment of RockPlaza Lofts (eight buildings adjacent to the Prudential Center Arena), 494 Broad Street (a 200,000-square foot office complex with a 635-space parking garage across the street from 1 Washington Park), and the conversion of the old Presbyterian church at James Street and Washington Street in Newark for a headquarters facility for Audible.com which will be finished in December 2018. |
Steve Bosin I graduated Rutgers University in New Brunswick New Jersey as a Dean’s list student and President of the Senior Class. I then graduated Rutgers Law School in Newark, N.J. where I was a research assistant to Professor Ruth Ginsburg, now of the U.S. Supreme Court. I then earned a Masters in Corporate Law from the New York University School of Law.
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Christopher C. Burdett In early 1968 I had been told by Dean Heckel that I would be the first Rutgers Law School graduate ever to clerk at the U.S. Supreme Court (for Justice Brennan), only to have that selection fail to materialize when Justice Brennan became ill and his staff selected his law clerks from Yale and Harvard, as had always been his practice. Then, with Arthur Kinoy’s tremendous assistance and support, I was offered a position as the first staff counsel in the history of the national office of the ACLU, only to have that job vanish when the ACLU was unable to fund it. |
James J. Capone, Jr. I am still working full time as a tenured full Professor of Business Law and Accountancy at Kean University, Union, New Jersey. At Kean I instruct courses in Accounting and Business Law. |
Priscilla Read Chenoweth Having spent years in the civil rights movement, I was the chairman of the Middlesex County Economic Opportunities Corporation when I entered Rutgers Law School (at age 35). Dean Willard Heckel persuaded me to leave that post for my law books. During the summers I wrote briefs for Wilentz, Goldman and Spitzer and I was on Rutgers Law Review. In my work with MCEOC I had succeeded in establishing the Legal Services Corporation office Middlesex County, so I went to work for it. However, I was very interested in the state employees’ being allowed to create an organization and, after about a year, I became a deputy attorney general for the Public Employment Relations Commission. (It was never, ever, called a union—the Legislature and Governor Hughes made it very clear that no employees could even think about going out on strike.) About a year later, a Republican Governor won and could replace Attorney General Arthur J. Sills. PERC had settled down by that time, and when Sills invited me to join him as an associate in a firm he was forming in Perth Amboy, I said yes. (My family’s home was in Metuchen, and Perth Amboy is closer than Trenton.) However, the firm Sills had created dissolved; he went to Newark and I ended up as a solo in Metuchen. For about three years, I handled matrimonial cases, municipalities, and gave assistance to a Public Defender. |
Nicholas Conforti Judicial clerkship with Hon. John W. Fritz Sept. 1968 to August 1969; general practice of law Sept. 1969 to March 1983; municipal court judge-June 1972 to March 1983 in Sussex, Byram, and Sparta in Sussex County; Superior Court Judge March 1983 to November 2013; now retired & on recall to the Superior Court. Married to Sheila (nee) Horan for thirty years; we have six adult children between us and thirteen grandchildren. |
George Dougherty As for post-Rutgers enriching experiences, first was my clerkship with Judges Thomas O’Brien and Arthur Simpson (Bergen Cty) followed by two years as D.A.G. under Arthur Sills and George Kugler. I started out in the 6-attorney Criminal Investigation Sect. before transitioning to the expansive Div. of Crim. Justice for the Cahill administration’s War on Crime. Those were heady days. Besides superseding County Pros. Offices (taking cases from the investigation stage to the Grand Jury, to trial and appeal) and prosecuting St. Police municipal court matters, I was assigned agency duties such as the Horse Racing Comm., Med. Examiner, State Police and the new Bureau of Securities. In October, 1971, I left the less exciting work of preparing wiretap logs for trial (by others) to become classmate Bob Gladstone’s Ass’t. Trenton City Atty. and formed my partnership with Jerry Katz (Class of 67). In 1975 I became City Attorney and married Alicia Marin (Rutgers Nursing ’68), then a Sen. Staff Pediatric R.N. at New York Hospital. Never thinking that we would grow roots in Trenton, we are both civically active and rooted, no children, but a retinue of rescue cats. The practice (KatzandDougherty.com ) is general, concentrating in Cemetery Law and Consumer Fraud (after the publication of Gennari v. Weichert, and continuing with Allen v. V&A Bros). After leaving City Hall in 1990, my municipal practice continued with the City Parking Auth. Counsel for Lawrence Tp, (1992-4) during which time I served as Local Govt Law Sec. Chair. In support of Trenton’s civic groups,I made several trips to the Sup. Ct. to enforce referendum protest rights (You Can Fight City Hall) During all this time I have managed to find time for art, music (Dixieland and Concert bands), flying, skiing and tennis. Retirement is not on the radar screen. |
Robert Gladstone My wife, Barbara, and I met in college, and were married before I started law school. We both worked during my time in law school. Barbara received a Masters’ degree at about the same time as I graduated. The Trenton/Princeton area was convenient to both our families and well-known to us, so Mrs. Hoffman arranged for a job with a Trenton law firm. It was a killer of a job, but I got lots of courtroom time and spent lots of hours working as a young associate. Good training, but good to leave. I left after three years to put out a shingle and earn a part-time salary as the lowest level associate in the Trenton City Attorney’s office. |
Jospeh A. Hallock I was an Administrative Judge with the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board, New York Field Office, in New York City from September 1992 until December 31, 2010, when I retired. I was also certified as a mediator for the Board’s Mediation Appeals Program. From October 1990 until I joined the Board, I served as the Regional Counsel of the Small Business Administration (SBA), New York Regional Office, in New York City. In this capacity, I oversaw the provision of legal services for program operations in the regional office and five district offices with a staff of approximately 18 professional employees. |
R. Michael Haynes Rutgers Law School established the foundation for what has turned out to be an unplanned but fascinating journey that began in New York, led me back to New Jersey, and finally brought me to the nation’s capital. |
Peter E. Henry 1968 - - An auspicious year - - Graduated from Rutgers Law; Kathy graduated from Douglass College; We got married August 10…I’m in the hospital August 12 having my appendix out; Missed two weeks of Skills & Methods Course and had to make them up; Sworn into the New Jersey Bar in November and started lawyering with Crummy, Gibbons & O’Neill in Newark (where I’d clerked in the summer of 1967 and through 3rd year) I was the 11th lawyer at Crummy that November; there were 87 when I left 20 years later. |
Marjorie Gelb Jones It was never my intention to practice law & I never have. When I graduated from college in 1962, classified ads in the NYTimes were posted separately as Jobs for Men/Jobs for Women & since I always wanted the men’s jobs, after three years - albeit exciting ones as secretary to the Chair of the Women’s Division of the NY Democratic State Committee (salary $55 per week) - especially at Rutgers, where tuition was only $500 per year, law school seemed a practical avenue of escape from behind a typewriter. Which proved to be the case, since my first job after law school in the trust department at Chase Manhattan Bank, paid $8000 per year, in those days a hefty salary, although of course I was paid significantly less than my male counterparts. |
Marc Kadish I left New Jersey soon after the bar exam. My life has provided me with opportunities and experiences I never imagined. My wife Suzin has been a public defender for 30 years. We have two daughters. I have a son from my first marriage. |
Ezra C. Levine After graduation in 1968 I moved to Washington, DC to work for the Commissioners of the Federal Communications Commission drafting opinions for contested proceedings. Thereafter, in 1970 I became an associate at the DC office of the LA based firm of Wyman, Bautzer, Rothman and Kuchel engaged primarily in litigation relating to Indian tribes. When that law firm's DC office closed at the end of 1973, I joined the Executive Office of the President in a newly created Federal Energy Office to deal with the shortfall of crude oil and refined petroleum products resulting from the Arab oil embargo. My responsibilities included all aspects of the Mandatory Price and Allocation regulations. By the end of 1974, Congress created a new agency, the Federal Energy Administration which succeeded to the duties and responsibilities of the FEO and I became an Assistant General Counsel for Interpretations and Rulings. By 1978, the FEA had become an element of the new Department of Energy. |
Howard McGinn After graduation and the bar exam I began a judicial clerkship for the Honorable Charles F. Paulis, a County Court Judge in Warren County NJ sitting in Belvidere. Taking that position introduced me to Warren County where I spent the rest of my legal career. |
Daniel O'Connell After graduating in 1968 I served as law clerk for the Honorable’s Samual Convery and DuBois Thompson in the Superior Court NJ Middlesex County . I left the clerkship in late 1968 to go on active duty with United States Army. On return I did a short clerkship with the Assignment Judge in Middlesex County Joseph Halpern who introduced me to William Lanigan the former associate General Counsel for John’s Manville Corp. who was setting up his practice in Basking a Ridge NJ and NYC. |
Len Olsen Dear Classmates: At first glance, summing up the last 50 years in a few words seemed an impossible task. But after eliminating all of those things that seemed so important at the time but which now, in retrospect, seem hardly worth mentioning, it’s not so hard. Here goes: |
Donald S. Ryan MARITAL STATUS:
EDUCATION:
ADMITTED TO THE BAR:
EMPLOYMENT HISTORY:
AREAS OF LAW PRACTICE:
SOLICITORSHIPS:
MEMBERSHIPS:
After graduating from Colgate in 1965, I enrolled in law school at Rutgers University in Newark. I spent three years there and got my JD degree, which included a non-credit course called the “Newark Riots.” |
David J. Sheehan
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Richard Silverman Following graduation in 1968, and shortly after taking the NJ Bar Examination, I was called to active duty as a First Lieutenant in the Adjutant Generals Corps of the US Army. While at Officers Basic Training at FT. Benjamin Harrison in Indianapolis, Indiana. Several weeks into the training I was notified that I passed the bar exam and was granted leave to attend the swearing in ceremony. While there I noted the number of fellow attendees with recent orthodontic appliances gleaming as they smiled…a basis for a draft exemption! |
Lee M. Smith After graduation, I clerked for the New Jersey Superior Court Assignment Judge for Passaic County and then served on active duty for three years with fellow classmate David Sheehan in the Navy Judge Advocate General’s Corps (in “exotic” duty stations located in Scotia, NY and Brooklyn NY). |
Myroslaw Smorodsky In looking back at the 50 years of my professional life, I am reminded that, to paraphrase John Lennon, “Life is what happens when planning other things”. As fate would have it, my legal career was quite an unexpected roller coaster ride encompassing many areas of the law ranging from criminal defense, to transactional and litigation matters, to class actions involving Nazi Era slave/forced labors claims. A staccato summary of my professional odysseys follows: |
Timothy T. West After graduation from the University of Virginia (B.A., 1965) and Rutgers Law School (J.D., 1968), Tim served as Captain, J.A.G.C., U.S. Marine Corps (1969-1972). He held various positions in the Staff Judge Advocate Office at Camp Pendleton, California, including, Defense Counsel, Chief Prosecutor and Military Judge. |
Carl R. Woodward, III After law school, I was associated with a small firm in New Brunswick, NJ, where I had my first opportunity to try cases, including a few jury trials. In March 1969, I entered active duty in the U.S. Army, where I served as a contracting officer, first in the U.S. Army Electronics Command, Philadelphia, and then as a Captain with the U.S. Army Procurement Agency Vietnam in Saigon. |