NYSBA Leadership
Officers
Scott M. Karson, President
Scott M. Karson of Stony Brook, a partner at Lamb & Barnosky, became president of NYSBA on June 1, 2020.
Karson is a commercial and municipal litigator with a concentration in appellate work and has argued more than 100 appeals in the state and federal appellate courts. He also chairs his firm’s Professional Ethics and Litigation Committees.
A NYSBA member for more than three decades, Karson served for three years as treasurer of the association. He has served on the Executive Committee as vice president for the Tenth Judicial District (Nassau and Suffolk counties). He is a member and former chair of the Audit Committee and is a member of the Finance Committee, the President’s Committee on Access to Justice and the Committee to Review Judicial Nominations. A longtime member of the Committee on Courts of Appellate Jurisdiction, Karson worked during his time as chair to clarify court rules to create a standard price that could be charged for court transcripts.
Read MoreScott M. Karson of Stony Brook, a partner at Lamb & Barnosky, became president of NYSBA on June 1, 2020.
Karson is a commercial and municipal litigator with a concentration in appellate work and has argued more than 100 appeals in the state and federal appellate courts. He also chairs his firm’s Professional Ethics and Litigation Committees.
A NYSBA member for more than three decades, Karson served for three years as treasurer of the association. He has served on the Executive Committee as vice president for the Tenth Judicial District (Nassau and Suffolk counties). He is a member and former chair of the Audit Committee and is a member of the Finance Committee, the President’s Committee on Access to Justice and the Committee to Review Judicial Nominations. A longtime member of the Committee on Courts of Appellate Jurisdiction, Karson worked during his time as chair to clarify court rules to create a standard price that could be charged for court transcripts.
A past president of the Suffolk County Bar Association, Karson was the county bar’s delegate to the American Bar Association (ABA) House of Delegates. As president, he will be a NYSBA delegate to the ABA. He still serves on the ABA’s Council of Appellate Lawyers. Karson is vice chair of the board of directors of Nassau Suffolk Law Services, the principal provider of civil legal services to Long Island’s indigent population. He has twice received the Suffolk County Bar Association President’s Award, in 1996 and 2011, and received the its Lifetime Achievement Award in 2018.
Before joining Lamb & Barnosky in 1987, Karson served as an assistant district attorney in Suffolk County and as principal law clerk to the late Associate Justice Lawrence J. Bracken of the Appellate Division, Second Department.
Karson earned his law degree from the Syracuse University College of Law, cum laude, and his undergraduate degree from the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
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T. Andrew Brown
President-Elect
Sherry Levin Wallach
Secretary
Domenick Napoletano
Treasurer
NYSBA Officers are elected by the House of Delegates and include the President, President-elect (who automatically become President the year following that of election), Secretary, and Treasurer.
Totaling thirty members, the Executive Committee has the authority to act and speak for the NYSBA, consistent with previous action of the House of Delegates, when the House is not in session. The Executive Committee meets quarterly and at other times as necessary.
The Executive Committee is composed of the President, President-elect, Treasurer, and Secretary of the Association. In addition, there are vice-presidents from each of the thirteen judicial districts (the 1st district has two vice presidents) in the state, eight members-at-large, and the immediate past president. All officers are elected to serve one-year terms.
Section Chairs represent each of NYSBA’s 26 Sections. Each Section draws its membership from lawyers or judges with common professional interests. Sections operate with their own officers, dues schedule and committees. They address professional development, improvement of laws and continuing education in a variety of substantive law fields.
The control and administration of the NYSBA is vested in the House of Delegates, the decision and policy-making body of the Association. The House meets four times a year (January, April, June and November). Action taken by the House of Delegates on specific issues becomes official NYSBA policy.
T. Andrew Brown
T. Andrew Brown of Rochester is founder and managing partner of Brown Hutchinson LLP. A 29-year member of the State Bar Association, he has chaired the Trial Lawyers Section and Finance Committee, was vice-president for the 7th Judicial District, served as a member-at-large of the Executive Committee and co-chaired the Task Force on the Future of the Legal Profession in 2010 and 2011.
Since 2012, Brown has been a member of the New York State Board of Regents, which provides general supervision of all educational activities within the state and has been Vice-Chancellor of the Board since 2017.
Brown entered law practice as an associate with Nixon, Hargrave, Devans and Doyle (now Nixon Peabody). He has also served as Rochester’s corporation counsel — the city’s chief legal officer and head of its law department — and as deputy county attorney for Monroe County. He has been a mediator and an arbitrator on the commercial, employment and complex case panels of the American Arbitration Association for more than two decades.
Brown is a former general counsel of the National Bar Association, the largest association of attorneys and judges of color in the world. He is a past president of the Monroe County Bar Association and the Rochester Black Bar Association. He has served on many other boards and commissions and has also held adjunct teaching positions with the State University of New York.
Brown is a 1984 graduate of the University of Michigan Law School and a 1981 graduate of Syracuse University.
Sherry Levin Wallach
Sherry Levin Wallach of Westchester is serving her fourth one-year term as NYSBA secretary. She is the deputy executive director of the Legal Aid Society of Westchester County.
A former chair of the Criminal Justice Section, Levin Wallach has served as vice president from the Ninth Judicial District to the Executive Committee, chaired the Membership Committee and co-chaired the Task Force on Incarceration Release Planning and Programs. Currently in her third four-year term on the House of Delegates, Levin Wallach serves on the Committee on Professional Discipline, the Committee on Mandated Representation, the Task Force on Parole Reform and chairs the Resolutions Committee.
Levin Wallach is co-founder of the NYSBA Young Lawyers Section Trial Academy, an annual program offering five days of intensive trial training, where she is a team leader and lecturer. Levin Wallach organizes and lectures at continuing legal education programs for NYSBA, the New York State Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and the Westchester County Bar Association on the topics of criminal and civil trial practice, ethics and DWI. She has written a chapter on DWI defense, “Best Practices for Defense Attorneys in Today’s DWI Cases,” in “Inside the Minds: Strategies for Defending DWI Cases in New York,” as well as articles on criminal justice issues and trial practice.
Levin Wallach concentrates her practice on criminal defense. She has also practiced in the areas of estate planning, probate and estate administration, real estate, and general civil litigation in the state and federal courts. She is admitted to practice in New York, the U.S. District Courts for New York’s Southern and Eastern Districts and the U.S. Supreme Court. She serves on Westchester and Putnam counties’ 18B panels under their assigned counsel plans, which provide criminal defense for indigent people.
She is a former assistant district attorney of Bronx County. Levin Wallach was principal at her law firm Wallach & Rendo, LLP for approximately 14 years, and of counsel to both Bashian Law P.C., formerly Bashian & Farber LLP and Brown Hutchinson LLP.
Levin Wallach earned her law degree from Hofstra University School of Law, now the Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University and her undergraduate degree from George Washington University.
Domenick Napoletano
Napoletano is a solo practitioner focusing on complex commercial litigation and appellate work while maintaining a general practice. A number of his cases have appeared in published decisions, most involving real property, and tenancy and occupancy issues. He has also spearheaded various state and federal class action lawsuits, including one against the New York City Department of Finance for its imposition of ‘vault taxes.’
Among his NYSBA activities, Napoletano is chair of the General Practice Section and co-chair of NYSBA’s Emergency Task Force for Solo and Small Firm Practitioners as well as the Committee on Civil Practice Law and Rules. He is a member of NYSBA’s Restarting the Economy Work Group and the COVID-19 Recovery Task Force working group on landlord-tenant disputes. He has served on many NYSBA committees including Finance, Leadership Development, Bar Leaders of New York State, Animals in the Law, the President’s Committee on Access to Justice, Task Force on the Evaluation of Candidates for Election to Judicial Office and the Task Force on Mass Shootings and Assault Weapons.
Napoletano also served on NYSBA’s Executive Committee as vice president from the Second Judicial District, and the House of Delegates representing the Brooklyn Bar Association. He is a past president of the Brooklyn Bar Association, the Columbian Lawyers Association of Brooklyn, the Confederation of Columbian Lawyers of the State of New York and the Catholic Lawyers Guild of Kings County.
While in college and throughout law school, Napoletano worked for then–New York State Assemblyman Michael L. Pesce, who recently retired as presiding justice of the state Supreme Court Appellate Term for the 2nd, 11th and 13th Judicial Districts. Napoletano earned his law degree from Hofstra University School of Law and his undergraduate degree from Brooklyn College.