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A Conversation with Author Matthew Clair, Assistant Professor of Sociology and (by courtesy) Law, Stanford University

More than 100 Brooklyn Law faculty, friends, and community gathered on Feb. 9 for the announcement and celebration of the $1.5 million gift of powerhouse attorney Allen Grubman ’67 and his wife Deborah Grubman to establish a Chair in Media and Entertainment Law. The endowment will allow Brooklyn Law School to recruit a nationally recognized scholar in media and entertainment law and further cement its reputation as a national leader in the field. Among the evening’s highlights was a lively interview with Grubman, hosted by iconic television sportscaster and journalist Bryant Gumbel, a longtime friend of the attorney and among his many celebrated clients. “Why this gift, and why now?” asked Gumbel. “Well,” said Grubman, “as I’ve told my grandkids, ‘I really enjoyed being inducted into the [Rock and Roll] Hall of Fame, but this, to me, is much, much more important.’ I owe all my success to my career, and I owe my career to Brooklyn Law School. All roads lead back to this.” Opening the celebration was Frank Aquila ’83, Chair of the Law School Board of Trustees, who, in his welcome to attendees, lauded Grubman’s inspirational journey. “From humble beginnings in Crown Heights to standing at the pinnacle of the entertainment world, Allen’s relentless work ethic, true intellect, and unwavering commitment to his clients, his family, and, thankfully, Brooklyn Law School are legendary. Allen’s remarkable contribution to the legal community and the entertainment world have not only earned him an indelible place in the annals of our profession, as well as the spot in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but he has also Inspired countless Brooklyn students to pursue their dreams. Allen’s journey from Brooklyn Law School graduate to one of the preeminent dealmakers and the undisputed éminence grise of the entertainment world, exemplifies the transformative power of a Brooklyn Law School education.” In a reference to the late Professor Joseph Crea, whom Grubman has credited with saving his law school life, and enabling him to launch a career, Aquila said, “I know that Joe Crea is here with us in spirit this evening and is extremely proud of all you have accomplished.”  (Grubman’s longtime support of the Law School includes his previous gift to establish the library’s Joseph Crea Reading Room, dedicated to his mentor.) The impact on the Law School of the Grubmans’ gift, said President and Joseph Crea Dean David Meyer, will be “large and multi-dimensional for years to come, strengthening our faculty, expanding opportunities for our students, and raising Brooklyn Law School’s reputation nationally. Allen and Deborah’s gift and the appointment of the inaugural Allen Grubman Chair is a crucial first step toward a broader strategic ambition of building a center with resources and faculty that will make Brooklyn Law the hands-down national destination for serious engagement and insight into the future of media and entertainment law. So I thank Allen and Deborah for their vision, their great generosity, and making it possible for us to begin this journey.” In thanking the Grubmans on behalf of the school and its students, Professor of Clinical Law, Director of Externship programs, and noted sports law expert Jodi Balsam said, “Allen’s gift endowing a chair takes us to the next level. It confirms and builds on what those of us who have practiced law in this area have long recognized: Media and entertainment law is a field of study that is dynamic, intellectually challenging, and greatly enriches the law school curriculum.” As faculty advisor to the Brooklyn Entertainment and Sports Law Society (BESLS) and Brooklyn Sports and Entertainment Law Blog, Balsam relayed the many endeavors of students, through symposia, clinics, and analysis of contemporary legal issues in the field, among others. “I have a front-row seat to the students’ entrepreneurial spirit, their industry, and their commitment to advancing this area of study and professional development,” Balsam said. “Our students truly are the champions of our media and entertainment law presence in New York and nationally.” Two of those students, Haley Zenenberg ’24, president of BESLS and managing editor of the BESLS blog, and Henry Callander ’24, BESLS leader and member of the Brooklyn Law Incubator and Policy Clinic (BLIP), also took to the podium. Recounting how Brooklyn Law has consistently scored among top schools in media and entertainment law in ratings from the Hollywood Reporter and Billboard, Zenenberg spoke of the enormous opportunities a BLS education presents. “Lawyers like Mr. Grubman are clearly responsible for this growing notoriety, and with the establishment of his chair, the sky is truly the limit for Brooklyn Law,” said Zenenberg. “Most importantly, you’re actively inspiring the culture of BLS alumni, paying it forward to the attorneys that come after you.” When Grubman and Gumbel took the stage, the animated conversation between the two friends touched on Grubman’s Brooklyn roots, his childhood gig as a singer-performer, and how, despite his self-professed checkered academic career, he made it to the top of his profession. “I wasn’t a great student, but I was very lucky to have a lot of emotional intelligence, EQ,” Grubman said. “Achievement is very, very important. And if you go to Harvard or to Yale, it always looks good on the résumé, but I tell law students, if all you have is that IQ ability and you don’t develop your EQ ability, your hands are, to a certain extent, tied.” “So how big a deal is this tonight?” asked Gumbel, in turning the conversation toward the Law School chair. “This is a very big deal,” Grubman said. “You know, throughout your career people will say nice things about what you’ve accomplished. But I really want to do something to give back to the Law School. If I didn’t go to Brooklyn Law School, God knows what would have happened to me. I would probably have been a very successful garment center salesman or something. So I owe so, so much to this, that for me to be able to give back by creating this chair, which I think will be very productive, it makes me happy.” The two discussed the state of the entertainment business today, AI’s potential impact on the industry, and Grubman’s decision for his firm, Grubman Shire Meiselas & Sacks, which will celebrate its fiftieth anniversary in May 2024, to diversify beyond music to film and television, and to represent both performers and the business side. “There was a dramatic change in the music industry where people stopped buying records the way they used to, and I got very nervous. I said, I don’t want to be a one-trick pony, so I decided it’s time to expand.” “The best part of what you do?” asked Gumbel. “I love to make deals,” Grubman said. “It’s like the Olympics. You're in a tournament and you want to win. And you have to win in a unique way.” Grubman also has an unadulterated love for Frank Sinatra, Gumbel pointed out, even amid all the contemporary artists he represents. About the famous photo of Sinatra that hangs on the wall of his office, Grubman said, “If I had a photo of one my clients there, the other people would say, ‘What about me?’ Nobody’s ever said anything about Sinatra.” Gumbel even introduced a word association game, getting Grubman’s spontaneous impressions of some of his star clients, including Bruce Springsteen (“a great American with a unique voice”), Elton John (“a genius”), Mariah Cary (“one of the great survivors”) , and even Gumbel himself (“a dear friend whose impact on television journalism would be very difficult to duplicate”), before quipping, with a laugh, “Are you happy now?” In an audience Q&A, Grubman was asked about his advice for students who aspire to follow his lead in the media business. “If you work hard, if you’re ambitious, you’re honest, and you’re lucky, anybody can be successful,” he said. “Whatever area of law you choose, if you have passion for it, you have an advantage.” Along with Deborah Grubman, Grubman’s daughters Lizzie and Jennifer were also in attendance with their families. Grandson Harry asked about his grandfather’s motivation to keep going. “Well, I’m fortunate to have a law firm, so no one can fire me, at least not yet” Grubman said with a laugh. “And I love what I do.” Watch the video of the full celebration of the Grubman Chair in Media and Entertainment law and view the photos.

On Sept. 12, Dean David D. Meyer announced the appointment of Dominique Fowler, Ed.D, as Interim Arthur Pinto & Stephen S. Bohlen Associate Dean for Diversity and Inclusion. Fowler, who has been serving as Brooklyn Law’s Director of Student Life, will step up to the interim deanship as Professor Joy Kanwar completes her term.   The deanship, which has thus far been appointed as a part-time position on a rotating basis among faculty, will be transformed into a full-time dedicated administrative position, with a national search underway to fill the position, Meyer said.     “In the interim, I am grateful that Dom Fowler has agreed to accept appointment to the role,” said Meyer. “Dom joined BLS last fall as Director of Student Life and has already made a major mark through his dedication, judgment, compassion, and commitment to transparency and equity.”  Fowler has more than a decade of deep experience developing, implementing, and championing educational and student-driven initiatives. Before joining Brooklyn Law, he was director of student engagement for Iona University. He has also served in that position at Coker University, in Hartsville, S.C., and was director of alumni relations at Virginia Union University, where he is himself an alumnus, having received his master’s in education there. Earlier this month, Fowler successfully defended his dissertation exploring the influence of Black male cross-racial friendships on social engagement during their undergraduate years at a predominately white institution from the perspective of recent graduates and will shortly receive his doctorate in educational leadership from St. John Fisher University.   "I am sincerely humbled to serve as the Interim Arthur Pinto & Stephen Bohlen Associate Dean of Inclusion & Diversity at Brooklyn Law School,” Fowler said. “This opportunity and the role itself represent the level of importance at BLS, but more importantly it is an opportunity to build upon our commitment to fostering a community where all individuals feel seen, heard, valued, and empowered. I look forward to working closely with students, faculty, and staff to advance our efforts in creating an inclusive environment that celebrates diversity in all its forms. Honestly, what I look forward to most is (re)connecting with the campus community in a way that allows all of us to see that together we will continue to drive meaningful change and ensure that Brooklyn Law School remains a place of belonging and opportunity for everyone; whilst remaining committed to Arthur and Stephen's foundational vision."

More than 200 students and alumni convened online Jan. 13–15 for the inaugural January Jumpstart career development program. The program featured a full slate of engaging conversations with alumni leaders in their fields and faculty on breaking into the legal job market and how they seized opportunities to advance in their careers. The program’s sessions explored an array of topics, including careers in intellectual property law, health law, criminal law, entertainment, and finance, as well as panels on clerkships, entrepreneurship, and attorney well-being. Breakout groups gave students and alumni an additional opportunity to obtain career mentoring. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the workplace was front and center of many discussions. In the panel on “Professionalism in a Virtual World,” members of the Alumni Association Board’s Professional Development Committee discussed how recent graduates could further their professional development during a period of dynamic changes in the workplace. “There is a real opportunity for recent graduates and young associates right now,” said Colleen Caden ’99, partner and chair of the immigration group at Pryor Cashman. “If you're successfully navigating all of the new challenges in the workplace, you show that you are a superstar.” The three-day program culminated with the panel “Promoting Diversity and Inclusion in the Legal Profession,” led by Dean Michael T. Cahill and featuring David Djaha ’88, managing partner at Ropes & Gray; Gloria Greco ’98, global wealth & investment management compliance and operational risk executive at Bank of America; and Alphonzo Grant ’98, managing director of the legal and compliance division in the global litigation group at Morgan Stanley. Cahill described the efforts to reshape the legal profession as “an ongoing and important discussion for all of us,” and identified legal education’s unique responsibility to make the legal community more diverse and inclusive. “Concrete quantitative goals are an important part of any diversity and inclusion initiative,” said Grant. “On Wall Street, you learn that the numbers are the fundamental essence of how you track success. You need to, as a team, set a target, and then have a conversation on how you are going to reach those goals.” Concurrently with the panels, the Career Development Center ran a mock interview program, giving students experience speaking to alumni employers, who offered advice for navigating a virtual interview. See list of participating alumni Watch the sessions

In the wake of reports of deplorable conditions at Rikers Island and the deaths of 11 people that have occurred there this year, a group of elected officials have attended arraignments for several days throughout New York City’s boroughs to observe firsthand the process by which thousands of individuals end up in the facility, many for no reason other than the inability to post bail. Professor Jocelyn Simonson reported on these observations in The Nation. She explained that many prosecutors request, and judges order, bail that is far beyond what defendants can reasonably afford. “Too often…routine criminal proceedings either go unwitnessed or are indecipherable to those forced to be a part of them,” she wrote. “This allows judges and district attorneys to evade scrutiny, and it ensures the relative powerlessness of people and communities who are most frequently subject to prosecution and caging.” Many of the elected officials who observed arraignments have also signed a letter to New York City’s five district attorneys demanding that they stop requesting bail in all cases. “[T]he legislators’ acts of courtwatching, echoing the collective practice of courtwatching groups around the country, may also help us see the suffering at Rikers not as extraordinary violence, but as the inevitable and ordinary violence of the criminal system,” Simonson concluded. “It is violence that can be too easy to miss, even when it is right in front of our eyes.” Simonson has written on and been cited frequently on bail reform and bail funds, including writing in The New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Boston Review. Her writing has also explored the power of courtroom observation, for example in her 2014 paper published in the Harvard Law Review, The Criminal Court Audience in a Post-trial World. At the Law School, Simonson teaches courses in criminal law, criminal procedure, evidence, and social change. She is co-director of the Center for Criminal Justice. Her scholarship explores ways in which the public participates in the criminal process and in the institutions of local governance that control policing and punishment. Her articles have appeared or are forthcoming in top law reviews, including the Stanford Law Review, Yale Law Journal, Harvard Law Review, California Law Review, Columbia Law Review, and Georgetown Law Journal. Her work has been cited in two U.S. Supreme Court decisions. Read the article 

To Fred Rosen ’69, the most important thing for an entrepreneur to possess is conviction in their abilities. “The only thing that prevents you from doing anything is yourself,” said Rosen. “That’s the drama, that’s the game, that’s the joy…. Sometimes people are angry at you, sometimes they are mad at you, sometimes they don’t like you… but so long as you feel you are doing the right thing, you just have to tune out the noise and keep moving forward. You wake up in the morning, and start a new day. I did what I wanted to do—that was my journey.” Rosen, president and CEO of Ticketmaster Group from 1982 to 1998, imparted this wisdom and more to a captivated audience of law students at a Q&A hosted by Dean Michael T. Cahill and the Brooklyn Entertainment & Sports Law Society (BESLS) October 12. In a free ranging conversation with Cahill, Rosen related how he leveraged his experience in practice to transform a small startup ticketing company into the world’s leading computerized ticketing service. “There was nothing magic about what we did,” said Rosen. “The dynamic was the underlying economic model that was already there, but no one recognized it. We saw it, took advantage of it, and built upon it.” In 2021, Rosen created the Seymour and Hannah Rosen Endowed Scholarship. Named after his parents, the scholarship’s unique criteria are meant to target students who possess the skills that Rosen believes were essential to his success. “I think there’s something that everybody forgets when you become successful: you have an obligation to give back to your community,” said Rosen. “I think [the scholarship is] a way of being respectful to [my parents] because they gave me the opportunity [to study law]. And opportunities come to us in all different ways.” BESLS, one of the Law School’s largest student-run organizations, provides a network for law students with an interest in fields such as fashion, film & television, music, and sports law. The society sponsors various events and educational initiatives and facilitates partnerships with academic and professional organizations on and off campus. Watch the event here

  Brooklyn Law School’s Center for Criminal Justice hosted author Aya Gruber, professor of law at the University of Colorado Law School, to discuss her recent book, The Feminist War on Crime: The Unexpected Role of Women’s Liberation in Mass Incarceration (Cambridge University Press, 2020). In her book, Gruber examines the conflict inherent between the punitive impulse of what she defines as “legal feminism” and the issue of hyper-incarceration in the United States, and, in doing so, critiques the state’s ability to combat sexual and domestic violence through law and punishment. “The book is important and necessary,” said Kate Mogulescu, professor of clinical law and co-director of the center, who moderated the discussion. “Most people’s conception of feminist history only starts at a specific point, but [Gruber] highlights organizing work done by different types of feminists much earlier than that which has affected the growth of the carceral state.” Gruber said she “wrote this book for [her] law-school-aged self,” torn between a skepticism of state power and feminist orthodoxy that saw the importance of a strong response to gender violence. Gruber shares a wider historical lens with a less “monolithic” view of feminism, distinguishing between those who saw the legal tools of the state as oppressive against those who saw them as the normative mechanisms of justice. “As lawyers, we understand that our legal frames are necessarily state-centric, which can make us maybe more sanguine about law and law enforcement,” said Gruber. “We should realize that we should be somewhat careful about successes within that system, and reform from within. While many of the reforms feminists have made and proposed have made the carceral state more feminist, it certainly also made feminism more carceral.” Gruber also recognized the impressive scholarship of the Brooklyn Law School faculty in this area, citing the works of Professors Mogulescu, Cynthia Godsoe, Alice Ristroph, and Jocelyn Simonson. The Center’s book talk has become an annual event, bringing noted criminal law scholars and activists for critical conversations on criminal justice law and policy. Past speakers include Danielle Sered, author of Until We Reckon: Violence, Mass Incarceration, and a Road to Repair, (The New Press, 2019); Issa Kohler-Hausman, author of Misdemeanorland: Criminal Courts and Social Control in an Age of Broken Windows Policing (Princeton University Press, 2018); and Dr. Heather Ann Thompson, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winner Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy (Pantheon, 2016). Read more about the Center for Criminal Justice here Read more about Professor Aya Gruber here

In the field of linguistics and law, the late 1901 Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus Professor Larry Solan was regarded internationally as among its preeminent scholars. He served for nearly 30 years as an esteemed and beloved member of the Brooklyn Law faculty, was founder of the Center for the Study of Law, Language, and Cognition, and author of, among copious scholarly works, The Language of Judges (1993), which is widely considered the seminal work on linguistic theory and legal argumentation. He died on March 2, 2024, at 71.   In November 2023, Solan’s brilliant career and scholarship were honored in a special symposium, which gathered scholars and experts in linguistics from around the country to Brooklyn Law School to present papers. Now, those papers have been collected in the first of two “Festschrift” symposium issues of the Journal of Law and Policy (Vol. 33, Issue 1), available online.   “Larry’s work was, without exaggeration, groundbreaking,” writes Professor James Macleod, current director of the Center for the Study of Law, Language, and Cognition, in his introduction to the Journal’s issue, which features articles by a number of today’s most respected scholars in the field, all of whom have been influenced and inspired by Solan and his work. Citing the “significant gap in interdisciplinary legal studies” that had existed before Solan’s work began to fill that gap, Macleod said, “As the next 30 years of Larry’s own work, along with that of countless others, shows, there was then and remains today plenty of exciting work yet to be done. There couldn’t have been a better person than Larry Solan to open the door and invite us all in to do it.”  Issue 1 includes articles exploring a range of issues, including textualism in Congress and the courts, written by scholars William Eskridge, Alexander M. Bickel Professor of Public Law, Yale Law School; Abbe R. Gluck, Alfred M. Rankin Professor of Law and Faculty Director of the Solomon Center for Health Law and Policy, Yale Law School, and Laila M. Robbins, Yale Law School; Anita Krishnakumar, Agnes Williams Sesquicentennial Professor of Legislation, Georgetown Law; and Professor Brian G. Slocum, Florida State University College of Law, Professor Kevin Tobia, Georgetown Law, and Nicole Steitz, Debevoise & Plimpton.    In celebrating this issue of the Journal, Brooklyn Law also honors the enduring legacy of Solan, both to the school and to the academy, through his intellectual rigor and that of the legion of scholars, students, and colleagues he inspired, and through the work of the Center, under Macleod’s forward-thinking direction, which continues the groundbreaking research and collaborations in linguistics and the law that Solan so vigorously pioneered.