Carol A. Buckler
Professor of Law
Associate Dean for
  Academic Affairs

Carol Buckler became associate dean for academic affairs in July 2007. Previously, she was the Law School’s first associate dean for professional development. In her five years in that role, she oversaw the offices of Student Life, Career Services, and Public Interest and Community Service.

She teaches the wide-ranging yet often subtle professional skills needed by practicing lawyers, and is affiliated with the Law School’s Center for Professional Values and Practice.

The daughter of a certified public accountant, Dean Buckler gained an early respect for the professional ethic, a code that she turned into a career specialty while still a junior litigator. After graduating from Yale University and Harvard Law School, she began her legal career at Berle Kass & Case, a small Manhattan firm that emphasized public interest work. Assigned to research a question about a possible conflict of interest, she soon became the house expert on ethics.

“I always thought that ethics was an underrated subject among students. Practicing lawyers invariably look back and wish they had paid more attention in their ethics classes,” she says. She finds, however, that preaching about ethics is not the most effective technique. “You have to put students in a situation where they can see the competing interests and values that affect lawyer decision-making.”

She entered law teaching as an adjunct professor at Pace Law School and came to New York Law School in 1991. In addition to speaking and writing articles related to political asylum as part of her work in the Civil and Human Rights Clinic, Dean Buckler is coauthor of the popular workplace reference book, Everything a Working Mother Needs to Know About Pregnancy Rights, Maternity Leave, and Making Her Career Work for Her (Doubleday, 1994).

She became interested in the legal issues surrounding maternity leave while working through her first pregnancy in the mid-1980s when large numbers of women were just starting careers in such traditionally male professions as law. By the time she was pregnant with her second child, she and a pregnant colleague had become a source of information for other professional women who wanted children.

“There was a lot of information about the physical aspects of pregnancy as well as parenting tips, but we didn’t find anything helpful addressing how to deal with workplace issues,” Dean Buckler says.

Dean Buckler lives in Westchester with her husband, who practices international business law, and their two teenage children: a daughter who sings and a son who makes full use of the batting cage in their backyard.

Contact information:
T:  212-431-2182
F:  212-965-8841
E:  cbuckler@nyls.edu 
O: A207
Assistant: Debbie Denhart
T:  212-431-2839
E:  ddenhart@nyls.edu


Education:
Yale, B.A. 1978 cum laude
Harvard, J.D. 1982 cum laude.

Served on American Civil Liberties Union Privacy Committee and New York City Bar Association Civil Rights Committee.

Courses:
Lawyering
Legal Profession


At New York Law School since 1991.