Full-time Faculty

Marshall Tracht (click here to see Professor Tracht’s full profile)
Professor of Law
Director, LL.M. in Real Estate
Yale University, B.A. 1983 cum laude
University of Pennsylvania, J.D. 1990 magna cum laude
Order of the Coif; M.B.A. 1990 with distinction
Law Clerk, Hon. S. Martin Teel Jr., U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Columbia

Marshall Tracht works with the Center for Real Estate Studies and directs the Law School’s LL.M. in Real Estate program. He teaches Bankruptcy, Real Estate Transactions and Finance, Advanced Real Estate Financing, and related courses. Previously, Professor Tracht was a member of the Hofstra University School of Law faculty for 14 years, serving as Vice Dean from 2001 to 2006. He is co-author of Land Transfer & Finance: Cases and Materials, Fifth Ed. (Aspen 2007) and Construction and Development Financing, Third Ed. (Thomson West 2001), a member of the editorial board of The Banking Law Journal, and a contributing editor to the Real Estate Law Report. He has written extensively in the areas of mortgage law and was awarded the 1997–98 Grant Gilmore Award for excellence in legal scholarship. Before going into academia, Professor Tracht practiced in the real estate and bankruptcy groups at Arnold & Porter LLP in Washington, D.C., and clerked for the Honorable S. Martin Teel of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Columbia.

Richard C.E. Beck (click here to see Professor Beck’s full profile)
Professor of Law
Co-director, Graduate Tax Program
University of Chicago, B.A. 1963, Ph.D. 1973
Yale, J.D. 1980
New York University, LL.M. (Taxation) 1984
Fulbright Fellowships, University of Paris 1965–66, University of Calcutta Sanskrit College 1967–68

Richard C.E. Beck is an expert in federal individual income tax. He has testified before the Oversight Subcommittee of the House Ways & Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee on spousal liability income taxes. Among other courses, Professor Beck teaches Taxation of Property Transactions, Individual Income Tax, and Corporate & Partnership Tax.

Andrew R. Berman (click here to see Professor Berman’s full profile)
Associate Professor of Law
Director, Center for Real Estate Studies
Princeton, A.B. 1984
New York University, J.D. 1988 cum laude (Journal of International Law and Politics, Editorial Staff)

Professor Andrew R. Berman directs the Law School’s Center for Real Estate Studies. He is a former partner with Sidley Austin Brown & Wood’s New York Real Estate Group with more than 14 years of experience in private practice. While at Sidley Austin Brown & Wood, Professor Berman represented clients in all aspects of commercial real estate finance, including complex financing transactions such as mezzanine loans, preferred equity, and financings intended for securitization markets. Professor Berman also has extensive experience in real estate development projects, the sale and acquisition of real property and mortgage loan portfolios, and complex commercial leasing. He joined the law firm of Davis Polk & Wardwell as a corporate/real estate associate directly from law school. He then moved to Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz for four years as a real estate associate before joining Sidley Austin Brown & Wood in 1995, becoming partner in 1998. Professor Berman is actively involved with the Real Property Committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York and the Urban Land Institute.

Elise C. Boddie (click here to see Professor Boddie’s full profile)
Associate Professor of Law
Yale College, B.A. 1990 cum laude
Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, M.P.P. 1996
Harvard Law School, J.D. 1996 cum laude (Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, Executive Editor)
Law Clerk, Hon. Robert L. Carter, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York
 
Elise C. Boddie teaches Constitutional Law, Land Use Regulation, and Special Topics in State and Local Government. Previously, she was a visiting assistant professor at Fordham Law School. Professor Boddie entered academia after practicing civil rights litigation at the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund (LDF), where she was an associate director of litigation and directed LDF’s Education Program. She has litigated at the trial and appellate levels in the areas of affirmative action, employment, school desegregation, and economic justice and has argued in both the Eighth and Eleventh Circuit Courts of Appeals. Before working at LDF, Professor Boddie practiced corporate litigation in the New York office of Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP and was the first recipient of the Fried Frank/NAACP-LDF fellowship. She has appeared on CNBC Live, the Tavis Smiley show, and Court TV and has made guest appearances on several radio programs.

Richard H. Chused (click here to see Professor Chused’s full profile)
Professor of Law
Brown University, B.A. 1965 cum laude
University of Chicago, J.D. 1968 (University of Chicago Law Review, Topics and Comments Editor), Bowman C. Lingle Fellow in Urban Studies, 1966–67

Richard H. Chused is a prolific scholar and an expert on property law, law and gender, copyright law, and cyberlaw. Previously, he was Professor of Law at the Georgetown University Law Center, where he taught for 35 years. He also taught for five years at Rutgers School of Law in Newark. Professor Chused is a member of various history associations and the Society of American Law Teachers, where he was the Webmaster and a Board of Governors member for many years. He has published numerous books and articles on the legal history of gender and property law, and teaching texts in property and in copyright. His recently published work includes a book chapter on the treatment of the poor in American landlord-tenant law, an article on copyright law in the digital age, a lengthy history of the famous landlord-tenant case Javins v. First National Realty Corporation, a historical essay on Myra Bradwell’s Chicago Legal News, and a history of landlord-tenant court in New York City at the turn of the 20th century.

Gerald Korngold (click here to see Professor Korngold’s full profile)
Professor of Law
The College, University of Pennsylvania, B.A. 1974 summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa
University of Pennsylvania Law School, J.D. 1977 cum laude (University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Editor)

Gerald Korngold rejoined the New York Law School faculty in fall 2008 from Case Western Reserve University School of Law, where he was the McCurdy Professor of Law and served as Dean from 1997 to 2006. He was a faculty member at New York Law School from 1979 to 1987 and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs from 1984 to 1986. He has lectured nationally and internationally on land and property law issues and writes and teaches in the fields of property and real estate law. He is the author of Private Land Use Arrangements: Easements, Real Covenants, and Equitable Servitudes (Juris Publishing, 2004); co-author of two casebooks, Real Estate Transactions: Cases and Materials on Land Transfer, Development, and Finance (Foundation Press, 2002) and Cases and Text on Property (Aspen Publishers, 2004); and co-editor of Property Stories (Foundation Press, 2004). Professor Korngold’s current research focuses on privatization of public land use regulation, real estate transactions, comparative global property rights, and other issues.

Frank W. Munger (click here to see Professor Munger’s full profile)
Professor of Law
Co-chair, Law and Society Colloquium
Kenyon College, B.A. 1964 summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, Legal Services Corporation Fulbright Fellow (1964-65)
University of Michigan, J.D. 1968, Ph.D. (Sociology) 1977

A scholar of public law and a specialist in social science research, Frank Munger teaches Constitutional Law, Social Welfare Policy, Local Government, Land Use Planning, and seminars on contemporary justice, poverty, and globalization issues. Professor Munger has been General Editor of the Law & Society Review, President of the Law and Society Association, Chair of the Section on Sociology of Law of the American Sociological Association, Chair of the Law and Social Sciences section of the American Association of Law Schools, and has served on numerous editorial boards and government research review panels. He has also served as Academic Dean of Antioch Law School. He is a co-organizer of the New York Law and Society Colloquium, an interdisciplinary workshop featuring leading international scholars sponsored jointly by New York Law School and the Law and Society Institute at New York University.

Richard Marsico (click here to see Professor Marsico’s full profile)
Professor of Law
Director, Justice Action Center
Director, Economic Justice Project of the Justice Action Center
Fordham, B.A. 1982 summa cum laude
Harvard, J.D. 1985 magna cum laude
Law Clerk, Hon. Shirley Wohl Kram, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York

Richard D. Marsico directs New York Law School’s Justice Action Center, where he is responsible for shaping the School’s efforts to use law’s constructive power as a tool of justice and social welfare. He brings extensive practical experience to the Justice Action Center, having worked as a staff attorney in the Civil Division of the Legal Aid Society in the Bronx and as law clerk to the Honorable Shirley Wohl Kram of the U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York. He teaches clinical courses at New York Law School, where he has supervised students representing clients on diverse issues including discrimination, community reinvestment, not-for-profit law, and political asylum. Professor Marsico’s scholarship now focuses on the Community Reinvestment Act and predatory mortgage lending. He is examining ways to encourage banks to make loans to businesses and residents of low-income neighborhoods without encouraging predatory lending at high interest rates and harsh terms.

Ross Sandler (click here to see Professor Sandler’s full profile)
Professor of Law
Director, Center for New York City Law
Editor, CityLaw, CityLand, and CityRegs Newsletters
Dartmouth, A.B. 1961
New York University, LL.B. 1965, Order of the Coif, (Law Review); Root Tilden Fellow

Professor Ross Sandler is the founding director of New York Law School’s Center for New York City Law. He joined the Law School in 1993 after a long and distinguished career in public service. During the early 1970s, he worked in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan as the Chief Appellate Attorney and Chief of the Environmental Enforcement Unit. His office’s successful prosecution of Hudson River polluters led to the passage of the 1972 Clean Water Act. Later, as Senior Staff Attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council, he headed the Urban Environmental Unit, winning a pivotal Clean Air Act case. In 1981, Mayor Edward Koch appointed Professor Sandler to the newly created position of special advisor to the mayor, where his environmental law experience helped revitalize the city’s mass transit system. In 1986, he was appointed Department of Transportation Commissioner and proceeded to reorganize the 8,000-person department with a program of maintenance and repair still in place today.

Adjunct Faculty

One of the strengths of the LL.M. in Real Estate at New York Law School is the opportunity to study with some of the leaders of the New York real estate bar.

Lucas A. Ferrara
Landlord/Tenant Law
Lucas A. Ferrara is a partner at Finkelstein Newman Ferrara LLP, a leading landlord/tenant firm, where he represents primarily corporate clients in real estate disputes. Professor Ferrara’s writing credits include numerous essays and articles which have appeared in a variety of publications including New York Newsday, the New York Law Journal, and the New York State Bar Journal, and he is co-author of the West treatise Landlord and Tenant Practice in New York.

Alexander Ferrini III
Construction Law; Construction Litigation
Alexander Ferrini is principal of his own construction law firm, representing leading developers and other institutions in construction negotiation and litigation. He is the author of numerous articles on construction law and a regular instructor at continuing professional education events.  

Theresa Garelli
Title Insurance
Theresa Garelli is Senior Vice President and Counsel at First American Title Insurance Company of New York, where she is responsible for national and international business development. She has more than 20 years of experience in the title insurance industry, including five years as the Chief Claims Counsel at First American. Professor Garelli is a well known speaker at legal conferences and is a member of the Board of Directors of the Association of Real Estate Women.

Joseph Giamboi
Real Estate Development
Joseph Giamboi is General Counsel of The Zucker Organization and is responsible for overseeing all of the firm’s legal affairs, including property acquisition, development, construction and property management. The Zucker Organization, one of New York City’s most prominent full service real estate organizations, has built, owns and manages more than 3,500 apartments.    

Emanuel B. Halper
Real Estate Negotiation and Drafting
Emanuel Halper is a real estate consultant, attorney, author and teacher with extensive experience on both the legal and business sides of transactions. He is a partner of the Canadian Pacific Realty Company, and has served as president of Vornado, Inc,’s real estate subsidiary and founding partner of a leading boutique real estate law firm. He is the author of scores of articles and books on real estate, including leading treatises on Shopping Center and Store Leases and Ground Leases and Acquisition Contracts. An outstanding lecturer and teacher, Professor Halper has served on the faculties of numerous universities, including NYU’s Real Estate Institute, the Graduate School of Business at the University of Wisconsin and Hofstra Law School. A member of the American Bar Foundation, he is also the recipient of numerous professional awards, including the ABA’s Spirit of Excellence Award for his work in establishing its Community Outreach Program.  

David M. Ledy
Drafting Workshop
David M. Ledy is the Chief Operating Officer of U.S. Realty Advisors, a leading real estate firm that both invests in projects and serves as an advisor to companies, financial institutions, developers, and investors on the acquisition, structuring, and financing of real estate assets. Prior to joining U.S. Realty Advisors, he was Chairman of the real estate workout group at Shea & Gould.    

Richard G. Leland
Land Use Law
Rick Leland is a partner at Fried Frank, with over 30 years experience representing real estate developers, energy companies, non-profit organizations and public authorities. His practice encompasses a wide range of land use and environmental matters, including zoning, takings, environmental impact assessments, regulatory and transactional counseling, and litigation. A former Chairman of the Environmental Committee of the Real Estate Board of New York, Professor Leland has also taught at land use and environmental law courses for more than twenty years.

Charles J. Maikish ’74
Land Use Law
Charles Maikish is an attorney and engineer whose varied and distinguished career includes helping to rebuild the World Trade Center after the 1993 terrorist bombing, serving as Executive Vice President for Global Real Estate at J.P. Morgan Chase, and running the Lower Manhattan Construction Command Center in the wake of the 2001 destruction of the World Trade Center. He is a member of the School’s Center for Real Estate Studies Advisory Board, and has previously taught Land Use at NYU.

Lawrence Schnapf ’84
Environmental Problems in Business Transactions
Lawrence Schnapf, who practices with Schulte Roth & Zabel LLP, is one of New York’s leading environmental attorneys and is as accomplished in the classroom as in his practice. He has served as Chair of the Environmental, Energy, and Natural Resources Law Committee of the ABA’s Section on Business Law and Co-chair of the NYS Bar Association’s Brownfields Task Force. He is also a prolific writer on environmental law and policy.  

Richard Siegler
Cooperatives and Condominiums
Richard Siegler, a partner at Stroock & Stroock & Lavan LLP, represents many of New York’s leading coop corporations and condo associations. Known as one the top experts in the field, he is the author of regular columns for the New York Law Journal and Habitat, and serves as Counsel to the Real Estate Board of New York’s Residential Management Council. He has a passion for the classroom and has taught at New York Law School for more than 20 years.

Mark A. Silberman
Preservation Law
Mark A. Silberman serves as General Counsel of the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission, the largest such agency in the country, where he oversees all policy and regulatory initiatives, litigation, rule-making procedures, application reviews, and enforcement actions. Before joining the Landmarks Preservation Commission, he was an attorney with Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP.  

Ventura Simmons
Affordable Housing and Community Development
Ventura Simmons is a senior attorney at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), where he represents the agency in major real estate transactions, with an emphasis on affordable housing development, management and preservation, and complex private/public financing and development projects. Before joining HUD, Professor Simmons was a real estate attorney at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP.

L. Stanton Towne
Commercial Leasing
L. Stanton Towne, an accomplished commercial leasing attorney, recently joined Studley, one of New York’s top commercial leasing brokerage firms, as a senior managing director. He was previously a partner with McDermott Will & Emery and with Towne Dolgin Sawyier & Horton, a firm he co-founded and co-managed for eight years. He started his legal career with international law firm Sullivan & Cromwell. Among other honors, he is a past chair of the Committee on Real Property Law of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York.

Benjamin Weinstock
Advanced Real Estate Transactions
Benjamin Weinstock is Co-chair of the Real Estate Department of Ruskin Moscou Faltischek, P.C., one of Long Island’s largest and most prestigious firms. He has extensive experience in complex commercial real estate transactions, real property acquisition and development, and financing. Professor Weinstock is the Secretary of the New York State Real Estate Board and a frequent lecturer for continuing legal education programs sponsored by the New York State Bar Association and several other CLE providers.