Cybersecurity Law Students Share Research, Moderate Attorneys at NYCLA Program
Students in the Cybersecurity Law, Policy & Practice class taught by Adjunct Professor Mark Rosen ’75, shared their research and helped moderate discussions among attorneys at a recent New York County Lawyers Association (NYCLA) continuing legal education (CLE) session titled “Lawyering in an AI and Cyber World.”
Nearly 100 attendees, including participants from Columbia University and UC Berkeley, joined the April 4 virtual CLE program led by Rosen, who is program chair for the NYCLA’s National and Cybersecurity Law Program. Director of Operations and Adjunct Professor Paul Jang ’18 , who teaches Technology in Law and Practice, also participated as a panelist in the event, which is now in its sixth year.
As in previous years, volunteers from Rosen’s class shared their cybersecurity law research with the audience in one-minute presentations, providing students a chance to highlight their work to a legal audience and potentially make connections. One student speaker last year was subsequently invited to present his topic to a Drake University Law School Cybersecurity class, Rosen said.
Some of the 20 student volunteers, who in total represented about half of the class, also functioned as moderators in breakout rooms where participants were presented with two hypothetical fact patterns, scenarios that students already had discussed in class.
“The people in the audience were each assigned to a breakout room with 10 to 12 other people and before they went into the breakout room they were told, ‘Here are the facts. Your client or your boss needs your response in 30 minutes,’ and then one or two of our students would moderate the conversation,” Rosen said. The students were given 40 questions and an outline to guide the conversations, during which they prompted participants to consider questions such as what the most imminent task before them was, as well as legal issues.
What ensued were lively discussions that impressed the organizers at NYCLA who popped into the rooms to check in. “There were actual conversations and dialogue, and the reviews from the audience for the sessions were so good that the director of the program asked if we could come back and do it again,” Rosen said.
The learning opportunities continued in class after the CLE event, when Rosen had students critique their own and one another’s presentations. This gave them an opportunity to learn how well they did when it came to looking at the camera, whether they spoke too quickly when providing their summaries, and so on.
“I’ve been part of this program since 2019 and it’s great to see how it’s adapted year after year in response to-fast paced challenges in how attorneys operate,” Jang said. “No longer is the average firm an island. They need to work with outside partnerships that have specialized subject matter expertise and job functions.”
Students who shared their research were: Samantha Beigelman ’26, Brandon Blum ’25, Sean Godfrey ’26, Andrew Kim ’26, Bradi Ledbetter ’26, Elizabeth Lebci ’26, Isaiah Mon Désir ’27 and Goran Poljak ’25.
Student moderators were: Brandon Campbell ’26, Jeffrey Chan ’26, Bebe Chancellor ’26, Abigail Gainer ’26, Sean Godfrey ’26, Andrew Kim ’26, Bradi Ledbetter ’26, Isaiah Mon Désir ’27, Andrew Newman ’26, Estefania Park Ruiz ’25, Joe Pistone ’26, Goran Poljak ’25, Elizabeth Roberts ’25, Quinn Sekreta ’26, Nicole Waldman ’25, and Maya Wang ’26.