Mariana Hogan

Professor of Law
Associate Dean for Professional Development
Director, Externship Program

As Mariana Hogan remembers, she ended up in law school after college because a career that relied on words and analysis seemed like a good bet for someone who had “always been very verbal.”

But somewhat to her surprise, it turned out to be the human element—listening to people’s stories and helping solve their problems—that held the most appeal.

During her first year at Georgetown University Law Center, courses in criminal procedure and torts were her favorites, and a Criminal Defense Clinic, which she took as a visiting student at NYU Law School, proved to be the experience that led to a career in criminal law.

As a new lawyer, Professor Hogan worked for four years as a staff attorney in the Legal Aid Society’s Criminal Defense Division in the South Bronx on a caseload that included everything but homicide. She then worked as a staff attorney in Legal Aid’s Federal Defender Services Unit in Brooklyn.

Professor Hogan started teaching when she moved with her husband to Detroit, where he had been transferred. A new mother, she had taken a leave of absence from Legal Aid, expecting to return in a year. Instead, she fell in love with teaching while working as an adjunct professor at Wayne State University Law School in Michigan.

Returning to New York in 1987, Professor Hogan looked for a way to combine the challenge and interest of teaching with the rewards of client representation. She found the perfect mix in clinical teaching, first for five years at Pace Law School and then at New York Law School since 1992.

“I can still remember each of the clients I had in my Criminal Defense Clinic in Manhattan Criminal Court over 30 years ago,” Professor Hogan says. “Representing clients who were relying on me was a formative experience, and it impressed upon me standards of practice that I have tried to maintain ever since.” She and Professor Frank Bress started a Criminal Law Clinic designed to give Law School students a similar experience.

Professor Hogan never lost her commitment to defending the poor. As a member, and then as cochair, of the New York County Lawyers’ Association Task Force on the Representation of the Indigent, she was instrumental in the creation of a monitoring program to ensure competent representation for defendants who could not afford counsel, the Indigent Defense Organization Oversight Committee (IDOOC). In 2006, Professor Hogan was appointed to IDOOC by the Presiding Justice of the Appellate Division Court in the First Department. The Task Force also issued a major report on assigned counsel pay rates that spurred the New York County Lawyers’ Association (NYCLA) to file a lawsuit, that led to a raise in the pay for private lawyers contracted by the city to represent indigent clients.

Professor Hogan has also been cosponsor of the Annual Federal Criminal Practice Institute, which seeks to diversify the panel of attorneys available to represent indigent clients in the federal courts by training women and minority lawyers for federal practice.

For more than a decade, Professor Hogan has directed the Law School’s Externship Program, which provides approximately 30 percent of second- and third-year law students with the opportunity to intern with judges or with lawyers in government, public interest organizations, corporations, or law firms. She sees these externships as invaluable opportunities for students to apply classroom learning to real situations and to evaluate possible career choices. Professor Hogan is the co-author of a chapter on judicial externships in Learning From Practice: A Professional Development Text for Legal Externs.

One of Professor Hogan’s favorite activities is sharing her knowledge of advocacy skills. She regularly teaches Trial Advocacy, Advocacy of Criminal Cases, and Deposition Skills at New York Law School, and she is a frequent lecturer and faculty member at programs for the National Institute for Trial Advocacy (NITA).

As an active member of the legal community in New York City, Professor Hogan serves on the Board of NYCLA and has recently completed a term on the Mayor’s Advisory Committee on the Judiciary.