Clinic Faculty
Yishai Boyarin
Visiting Assistant Clinical Professor of Law
B.A., University of California, Berkeley
J.D., University of California School of Law (Boalt), Berkeley
LL.M., Hofstra School of Law
Professor Boyarin specializes in ADR processes and conflict resolution with an emphasis in family law. He studied mediation and received a Foreign Language and Area Studies fellowship (FLAS) to study Arabic as part of his work on conflict resolution while obtaining his J.D. from UC Berkeley. After law school, he worked for three years as a business litigation associate at the Los Angeles office of the firm Orrick, Herrington and Sutcliffe, LLP. After leaving Orrick, Professor Boyarin reengaged with his earlier interest in mediation and conflict resolution and dedicated himself to the study and practice of ADR and family law, which was the focus of his LL.M. studies.
In the Mediation Clinic, Professor Boyarin’s students will primarily mediate disputes between parents and teens while working side by side with mental health specialists as part of a program intended to divert these cases from the juvenile justice system. Students will actively engage with issues surrounding mediation and ADR, juvenile and family justice, professional responsibility, and most of all, what it means to be a lawyer and counselor.
Professor Boyarin has contributed to, and written about, the drafting of the Uniform Collaborative Law Act (UCLA). The UCLA represents an attempt to create a uniform national statutory scheme for the practice of collaborative law, as well as integrate collaborative law within the broader legal community without compromising this ADR innovation. His research interests are mediation practice, theory and public policy, and the role of lawyers and the law in ADR processes.
Tigran Eldred
Visiting Assistant Clinical Professor of Law
B.A., Georgetown University
J.D., Fordham University School of Law in 1990
Tigran Eldred comes to Hofstra Law School from Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland, Oregon, where he directed the school's Employment Law Clinic. Previously, he served as Acting Assistant Professor of Lawyering at New York University Law School and clerked for Chief Judge James L. Oakes of the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. In practice, he specialized in criminal law, civil rights, and human rights, working at Sullivan & Cromwell, the Criminal Appeals Bureau of the Legal Aid Society, Federal Defenders in Brooklyn, and Appellate Advocates in New York City. From 1997-2000, he was National Outreach Director for the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights (now Human Rights First), where he coordinated a national effort to promote the rights of political refugees and the International Criminal Court. Tigran Eldred graduated from Georgetown University in 1986 and Fordham University School of Law in 1990, where he served as Notes and Commentary Editor of the Fordham Law Review. He is a member of the bars of New York and Oregon (inactive).
Professor Eldred’s students in the Criminal Justice System will represent indigent defendants charged with misdemeanors in the Nassau and Queens County courts. The students will represent clients from arraignments through hearings and trials in Criminal Court. In addition they will, where appropriate, assist clients by representing them when arrests for criminal offenses trigger civil collateral consequences.
Professor Eldred’s research explores the regulation of lawyers in criminal cases, with a focus on the Sixth Amendment right to effective assistance of counsel. His most recent article, The Psychology of Conflicts of Interest in Criminal Cases, will be published in the Kansas Law Review in October 2009.
Stefan Krieger
Professor of Law
B.A., University of Chicago
J.D., University of Illinois
Following law school, Professor Krieger served as a law clerk for Judge Hubert L. Will, Federal District Court, Northern District of Illinois, Chicago. He was a staff attorney at the west side office of the Legal Assistance Foundation of Chicago from 1977 to 1979. Professor Krieger was a clinical teacher for 13 years at the University of Chicago Law School and Southern Methodist University School (SMU) of Law, and has taught at Hofstra since 1992.
Professor Krieger specializes in the areas of public utility regulation, housing, and community development. At the Chicago clinic, Professor Krieger and his students represented a statewide coalition of community groups in successful efforts in 1985 to obtain passage of the Energy Assistance Act, which prohibited utility shutoffs of low-income customers who paid 12 percent of their income to their utilities. At SMU, Professor Krieger's students completed an extensive study of the Dallas County eviction courts that contained recommendations for reforming the system. At Hofstra, Professor Krieger and his students have represented hundreds of individual clients and community organizations to protect the rights of low-income tenants in the Village of Hempstead and surrounding neighborhoods.
Professor Krieger's scholarly interests are in the areas of litigation strategy and community development. Professor Krieger is the co-author of a text for clinical students, Interviewing, Counseling, Negotiation, and Persuasive Fact Analysis. He recently published an article in the Oregon Law Review on the functions of silence in the lawyering process.
Theo Liebmann
Clinical Professor and Director of Clinical Programs
B.A., Yale University
J.D., Georgetown University Law Center
Mr. Liebmann is the clinical instructor and attorney-in-charge for the Child Advocacy Clinic. Mr. Liebmann has spent his legal career working as an advocate for abused and neglected children, victims of discrimination, and defendants in criminal and juvenile delinquency cases. He was one of the original staff members of the Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem, a cutting-edge model of neighborhood-based criminal representation. He has also worked for the New York City Commission on Human Rights investigating and assessing discrimination claims. Prior to his current position at Hofstra, Mr. Liebmann represented hundreds of children in abuse, neglect, and delinquency cases at the Manhattan office of the Legal Aid Society's Juvenile Rights Division. Aside from his work on behalf of children in the courtroom, Mr. Liebmann created the law education component of the Andrew Glover Youth Program, a community-based center for at-risk youth on the Lower East Side of New York City, and has written on the ethical barriers to interdisciplinary work among attorneys and mental health professionals in child maltreatment cases.
Serge Martinez
Associate Clinical Professor
B.A., Brigham Young University
J.D., Yale Law School
Professor Martinez is the initial director of the Community and Economic Development Clinic. As the attorney-in-charge, he supervises students as they provide transactional (non-litigation) assistance to nonprofits, community-based organizations and micro-enterprises in low-income communities in and around Nassau County.
Prior to his current position at Hofstra, Professor Martinez was a Senior Staff Attorney in the Community Development Project of the Urban Justice Center, where he focused on working with grassroots organizations in the Bronx. Professor Martinez also worked for two years as an associate in the Tax group of Simpson Thacher & Bartlett.
Curtis Pew
Associate Clinical Professor
B.A., Tulane University
M.P.P.A., University of Wisconsin
J.D., George Washington University
Associate Professor Curtis Pew directs the Hofstra Securities Arbitration Clinic. The Clinic commenced operation during the summer of 2006. In the position of attorney-in-charge, he supervises law students in representing securities investors, subject to certain income, residency and size-of-claim restrictions, who pursue claims arising from retail securities investments. The claims are pursued in either arbitration or mediation before the National Association of Securities Dealers, the New York Stock Exchange, and other self regulatory organizations. Typical claims handled by the students include unsuitability, unauthorized trading, fraud and churning. The Clinic also represents employees of securities firms who have claims subject to arbitration. Prior to his present position at Hofstra, Associate Professor Pew was a lawyer initially specializing in arbitral matters arising in maritime law, and then in arbitration of international commercial and securities-related domestic disputes. Previously, he also was an Adjunct Professor at Cardozo Law School where he taught International Commercial Arbitration as well as coached the school’s Willem C. Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot team. His participation in the Vis competition will continue at Hofstra. Associate Professor Pew’s research interests include the application of expungement in securities arbitrations and the method used by certain legal systems for review of arbitral awards to ensure statutory consistency.
Lauris Wren
Clinical Professor
B.A., Williams College
J.D., Columbia University Law School
Ms. Wren, a Williams College and Columbia University Law School graduate, started the Political Asylum Clinic at Hofstra University School of Law. Previously, Ms. Wren was the director of the Refugee Assistance Program at the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, where she recruited, trained, and supervised pro bono attorneys in the representation of immigrants applying for political asylum. Ms. Wren also worked for several years at the Central American Refugee Center (CARECEN) in Hempstead, New York, representing Central Americans in political asylum and cancellation of removal cases, as well as with the Criminal Appeals Bureau of the Legal Aid Society in New York City.
Attempting to assist the victims of human rights abuses abroad as well as domestically, Ms. Wren has worked with many human rights organizations in Mexico and Central America, and has participated in human rights missions in various areas of the world. She worked intensively with immigrant victims of the terrorist attacks in New York and also has assisted immigrant communities affected by special registration and other policies passed in the wake of the terrorist attacks.