Our Alumni Keep in Touch
This section is intended to solicit correspondence from Empire State College alumni who have gone on to law school, completed their legal education, taken the bar exam and/or have joined the ranks of the legal profession.
Your experience and feedback would be most valuable to current Empire State College students pondering and exploring the possibility of embarking on a career in the law themselves.
Let us know how you are doing, what you think, what have been your positive experiences as well as your disappointments and what words of wisdom and advice you wish to impart to your Empire State College colleagues.
Please contact Maureen Winney, director of alumni and student relations at 518-587-2100, ext. 2254 or email her at maureen.winney@esc.edu. We would love to hear from you!
Alumni Contacts
Students are invited to contact these Empire State College alumni who have completed law school to ask questions and possibly set up a meeting time. Read the alumni's brief description and click on the email to correspond.
Brian F. Curran graduated from Empire State College in 1980 with a B.A. from the Genesee Valley Center. He went on to earn his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1983 where he was president of the Law School Council. He is employed as Legislative Director & Counsel of the New York State Public Employees Federation, a labor union which represents public employees. His practice includes representing the interests of the union in a wide range of state budget and legislative issues before the state legislature. He is also an elected City Council member in Rochester and has offices in both Rochester and Albany.
Email: bcurran@frontiernet.net
Day phone: 518-432-4003
Al Lawrence graduated from Empire State College in 1976 with a degree in journalism from the Northeast Center. He completed an M.A. in 1978 at SUNY Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy and a J.D. from Antioch University in 1981. He is now the Area Coordinator for Criminal Justice and Emergency Management for SUNY Empire Online. As such, he recruits, hires, supervises and evaluates instructors in 30 courses; develops new curricula; teaches courses in criminal justice and law and advises students.
Email: al.lawrence@esc.edu
Day phone: 518 587-2100, ext. 2775
Nan Lipsitz Haynes graduated from Empire State College in 1988 with a B.A. in cultural studies from the Niagara Frontier Center. She received her J.D. from the University of Buffalo School of Law in 1992, graduating magna cum laude. She is currently a faculty member at the UB School of Law where she teaches first year students required courses in research and writing. In addition, she is also of counsel to Lipsitz & Ponterio a litigation firm with an emphasis on toxic torts. Her area of interest is representing children injured as a result of exposure to lead-based paint.
Email: nlhaynes@buffalo.edu
Day phone: 716-645-5539
Kathleen R. Pugh graduated from Empire State College in 1991 with a B.S. from the Long Island Center at Old Westbury. She received her J.D. from Touro College Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law Center in 1995. Kathleen also received an LLM in Ocean & Coastal Law from the University of Miami in 1999 and is admitted to the bar in New York and Florida. Currently, she is the Senior Staff Attorney with the 17th Judicial Circuit Court, Broward County, Florida. She researches and analyzes legal issues and drafts memoranda and orders for various judges in the Circuit.
Email: Kat2spk@aol.com
Day phone: 954-831-7333
David Yamada earned his J.D. in 1985 from New York University School of Law, where he was on the Journal of International Law and Politics and received the Arthur T. Vanderbilt Medal for extraordinary contributions to the law school community. After law school, he received his MA in Labor and Policy Studies from Empire State College in 1999. He is now a Professor of Law at Suffolk University Law School in Boston. David's primary area of teaching and scholarship is employment law, and he is a leading authority on the legal and policy implications of workplace bullying and abusive work environments.
Email: dyamada@suffolk.edu