Featured Alumni
![Robert Hayes](/sites/default/files/styles/inside_small/public/Hayes_Bob_Portrait_001.jpg?itok=Fe8XDUiT)
Robert Hayes ’77 first became interested in issues affecting the homeless population as a young reporter covering social issues for the Long Island Catholic Newspaper. Then, as a student at NYU Law, Hayes struck up conversations with the men whom he…
![Sienna Fontaine](/sites/default/files/styles/inside_small/public/Fontaine_Sienna_Portrait_002.jpg?itok=7KNl5Vb5)
As a 2L student in the Family Defense Clinic, Sienna Fontaine ’07 learned early on that her clients often needed more than just legal representation.
“The clinic was a piece of my understanding of how low income families, especially families of…
![Valerie Radwaner](/sites/default/files/styles/inside_small/public/NW_Radwaner_Valerie_001.jpg?itok=84qxXCx3)
Valerie Radwaner ’87, deputy chair at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, attributes much of her success in private practice to the legal education she received at NYU Law. Radwaner, who in 2014 became the firm’s first deputy chair after a…
![Jeff Wolf](/sites/default/files/styles/inside_small/public/Wolf_Jeff_Portrait_001.jpg?itok=kblPR6Ua)
Jeffrey Wolf ’88 started his career as an entrepreneur while attending NYU Law. “I knew from a young age that I wanted to start cool companies,” says Wolf, who as a 1L launched National Coverletter, a service that aimed to make it easier for…
![Robert Nelson](/sites/default/files/styles/inside_small/public/NW_Nelson_Robert_001.jpg?itok=lsIo1oZv)
Throughout his career, Robert Nelson ’87, a partner at Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, has been willing to play the long game in order to get results for his clients. Nowhere has he demonstrated that more clearly than in the litigation…
![Ara Tucker](/sites/default/files/styles/inside_small/public/NW_Tucker_Ara_001.jpg?itok=KF0avuhS)
Ara Tucker ’04 was an art history and visual arts major at Princeton University when she decided to become a lawyer. But she also knew that it was important for her to continue to make art.
“I was very deliberate in choosing [NYU Law], because I…
![Tom Kirdahy](/sites/default/files/styles/inside_small/public/Tom_Kirdahy_portrait_002.jpg?itok=8ZOR3Gkz)
In June 2019 Hadestown, produced by Tom Kirdahy ’88, took home eight Tony awards, including Best Musical, and this year the show added to its honors a Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album. Kirdahy’s award for Hadestown was his first Tony…
![Todd Arky](/sites/default/files/styles/inside_small/public/Todd_Arky_portrait_002.jpg?itok=JVn1X2nL)
When Todd Arky ’98 joined SeamlessWeb as executive vice president for sales and business development in 2000, he had no sales force. Leaving his position as an associate at Arnold & Porter to join a brand-new startup was a leap of faith. By the…
![Sonia Lin portrait](/sites/default/files/styles/inside_small/public/NW_sonia_lin2.jpg?itok=tsTpoSRu)
Sonia Lin ’08 began working in the field of immigrants’ rights shortly after the 9/11 attacks of 2001 as a paralegal case handler in the Immigration Law Unit of the Legal Aid Society in New York. “I saw…the effects of the backlash against immigrant…
![Grasford Smith '05](/sites/default/files/styles/inside_small/public/Smith_Grasford_Portrait_001.jpg?itok=qM5VxQSC)
Small cases can teach big lessons. As a law student, Grasford Smith ’05 trained as a mediator with the NYU Mediation Organization, a student organization in which law students learn dispute resolution techniques and have the opportunity to apply…
![Bingna Guo](/sites/default/files/styles/inside_small/public/Guo_Bingna_Portrait_001.jpg?itok=_J_NCVq1)
Since 2012, the Chinese government has implemented a far-reaching anti-corruption campaign. For companies operating in China, internal anti-corruption and compliance are more important than ever before, meaning lawyers like Bingna Guo LLM ’02 are in…
![danielle Spiegel-Feld](/sites/default/files/styles/inside_small/public/Spiegel-Feld_Danielle_Portrait_001.jpg?itok=vb11PDFv)
When Governor Andrew Cuomo signed legislation in July reforming New York’s existing green roof tax abatement program, the legislative framework came largely from a proposal outlined by Danielle Spiegel-Feld ’10. In an article in the NYU…
![Eric Berry](/sites/default/files/styles/inside_small/public/NW_Berry_Eric_001.jpg?itok=RKVPBnJG)
Early on in his career, Eric Berry ’08 recalls, he was torn between his interests in law and technology. As a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), he worked on the Human Genome Project, the research program that first mapped…
![Bart Stichman '74](/sites/default/files/styles/inside_small/public/Bart_Stichman_portrait.jpg?itok=5dn5VIpw)
When Bart Stichman ’74 first began working on behalf of veterans rights more than 40 years ago, he recalls, “veterans were really treated as second-class citizens.” Judicial review of decisions made by the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) was…
![Tsedeye Gebreselassie](/sites/default/files/styles/inside_small/public/Gebreselassie_Tsedeye_Portrait_001.jpg?itok=WEZFc3qs)
In late March, fast food giant McDonald’s announced that it would no longer lobby against minimum-wage increases at any level: federal, state, or local. The decision came with seven states already set to raise their minimum wage to $15 per hour by…
![Phil Weiser](/sites/default/files/styles/inside_small/public/Weiser_Phil_Portrait_001.jpg?itok=-CSb3R64)
As a politically active college student at Swarthmore in the early 1990s, Phil Weiser ’94 decided to go to law school after a mentor told him a legal education would help him work in public service. He chose NYU Law based on a meeting with the then-…
![Steven Feldman '87](/sites/default/files/styles/inside_small/public/Feldman_Steven_Portrait_001.jpg?itok=URURqusK)
After graduating with an undergraduate degree in business from the Wharton School, Steven Feldman ’87 saw many of his peers going directly to jobs on Wall Street. He decided to pursue a law degree instead. Feldman credits his mother—“a woman of…
![Radha Natarajan](/sites/default/files/styles/inside_small/public/Natarajan_Radha_Portrait_001.jpg?itok=xxghRAAm)
Before she had even graduated from college, Radha Natarajan ’03 helped prepare an oral argument for the US Supreme Court. Among the cases she worked on as a legal assistant for voting rights attorney Joaquin Avila was Lopez v. Monterey County: Avila…
![Noah Waisberg '06](/sites/default/files/styles/inside_small/public/Noah%20Waisberg_Portrait.jpg?itok=dEWIJ7xP)
Nine years ago, Noah Waisberg ’06 was an associate at Weil, Gotshal & Manges, working primarily on mergers and acquisitions, securities, and private equity matters. Like many corporate associates, he spent a lot of time on due diligence for…
![Kyungchun Kim portrait](/sites/default/files/styles/inside_small/public/Kyungchun_Kim_portrait.jpg?itok=AYnyzcWE)
At only 38 years old, Kyungchun Kim LLM ’14, a partner at Lee & Ko in Seoul, Korea, is already an experienced hand at billion-dollar deals. Described by colleagues as a quintessential “problem solver,” Kim has used his talent for constructing…