Pro Bono Services and Recognition Programs

2024 Denison Ray and Phil Dailey Awards Winners Biographies

Denison Ray Award Winners

Kaitlyn Lauber, Esq., Staff Attorney, Erie County Bar Association Volunteer Lawyers Project Inc.
Kaitlyn J. Lauber is Staff Attorney at Erie County Bar Association Volunteer Lawyers Project, Inc. serving domestic abuse survivors and other crime victims in civil matters across Western New York. Her practice primarily focuses on family law and divorce litigation. The New York State Bar Association previously honored Kaitlyn with its President’s Pro Bono Service Award in 2021 for her work assisting pro se litigants during the peak of COVID-19 pandemic. Kaitlyn was admitted to practice in 2022 and is a member of the New York State and Erie County Bar Associations. She is a member of the Family Court Practice and Procedure Committee.

Kaitlyn has dedicated her career to pursuing accessible and lasting justice for all. As part of her efforts, she has written about various social and economic barriers litigants face when navigating the legal system. She earned her Juris Doctor degree from the University at Buffalo School of Law in 2021. Prior to entering law school, Kaitlyn attended Buffalo State University, where she received a Bachelor of Arts degree in communication studies. She is a member of the national communications honor society, Lambda Pi Eta and a local philanthropic sorority, Zeta Chi Omega. Kaitlyn has participated in several panel discussions centering on topics related to domestic and family violence issues. As a survivor of family violence, Kaitlyn takes an understanding and compassionate approach to uncover sustainable solutions in each case she handles. Kaitlyn is originally from the Central New York area and has made Buffalo her home for more than a decade.

Mark H. Wattenberg, Esq., Supervising Attorney, Legal Assistance of Western New York, Inc.
In 1969, I graduated from Columbia College and in 1973, from Columbia Law School. Then I joined VISTA. Instead of being sent to Brooklyn Legal Services Corp. B, which was taking on VISTA volunteers, through a bureaucratic mishap I was sent to a rural project in Cohocton, located in Western New York, even though I did not have a driver’s license and there was no public transportation. I became associated with the new flood relief legal services office located in a storefront in Corning, NY, which also had an office in Elmira, headed up by Tom Dubel. The Corning and Elmira offices, which were established as a result of HUD housing and private contractor issues following the Hurricane Agnes flood of 1972, were a branch of Monroe County Legal Assistance, Corp. (MCLAC)

The new Director of the Corning office of MCLAC, Gerald A. McInytre, had arrived from legal services in the Bronx. But as a former Peace Corps volunteer working with an Indigenous population in Guatemala, he had a flair for life in rural areas. The main exception was his many typical New York City style complaints about the food. He immediately threw himself into expanding the program. He was a Yale Law School graduate, a superb landlord-tenant and public assistance lawyer and an experienced federal court litigator. He had many New York City and national Legal Services Corporation contacts. He kept me on as a VISTA Volunteer (with pay of $75 per week) for approximately five years!

Finally, a position opened in the newly established Olean office. Based on a staff salary I was able to consider marriage as a possible option. My colleague in the Olean office, to begin with, was Mike Hanley, who became well known throughout the New York State legal services community, after he took a position at the Empire Justice Center, as a housing law expert with a specialty in Section 8 issues.

In approximately 1982, after severe budgets required the closing of the Olean office, I went into private practice but with a contract to provide legal services in Cattaraugus County and western Allegany County. Then in 1992, I was hired back by the Bath office of Southern Tier Legal Services, which had become independent from MCLAC. The Bath office operated out of a dilapidated store front. But under the leadership of Amy Christensen, the successor to Gerald McIntyre, the office quarters soon improved, and the program was greatly expanded. She was another graduate of Yale Law School and a gifted education lawyer. She helped to successfully merge Southern Tier Legal Services into the current LawNY and obtain, through networking and large grants, a domestic violence victims representation program throughout all of LawNY.

Amy was succeeded by Ellen Heidrick, a powerful social security disability lawyer, who grew up locally and was one of the first in her family to obtain a professional degree. Under her guidance, the Bath office expanded and set up a satellite office devoted to landlord-tenant law, established under the superb housing lawyer, David Kagle, who ultimately became director of housing for LawNY.  Since arriving in 1992, I have been continuously employed by the Bath office of LawNY as a foreclosure and bankruptcy attorney.

CURRENT PRACTICE

My current practice mostly involves homeowner protection including foreclosure defense, constructive trusts, and bankruptcy proceedings. The foreclosure defense cases include both mortgages and land contracts. A land contract is somewhat similar to a “rent-to-own” agreement.  The buyer does not get a deed until the contract is paid off. The land contract and rent-to-own agreements are often poorly drafted and even basic terms are not clearly set out. In addition, frequently the seller fails to give receipts for cash payments. Near the end of the term – often 15 or 20 years, the buyer is faced with the difficult job of establishing payment in full. Land contracts are largely unregulated by New York State.   I have filed a number of cases seeking title on behalf of land contract buyers. A recent case involves a contract term for late fees of $175 per month!

In addition, with the assistance of Michele Kreamer, a highly experienced paralegal in bankruptcy, housing law, and litigation, I have an active bankruptcy practice.   There are two types of bankruptcy – Chapter 7 which cancels almost all debts but usually cannot cancel a mortgage or a car loan – and Chapter 13 which allows payments over 5 years to preserve a house or car.  Many of our Chapter 13 filings are on behalf of low-income homeowners, such as social security recipients or low wage workers, who experience temporary hardship but whose income has stabilized. Chapter 13 provides a way of reorganizing finances and preserving housing.

The foreclosure defense cases also extend to property tax foreclosures. With co-counsel Kari Talbott, now the LawNY Director of Litigation, we successfully preserved the homes of two low-income households in Chapter 13 proceedings. This was under a bankruptcy proceeding known as “avoidance” where transfers such as tax foreclosures can be set aside if the homeowner did not receive “reasonably equivalent value.”  The case ultimately ended up in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, brilliantly argued by Kari, and certiorari was denied by the U.S. Supreme Court.  Gunsalus v. Cnty. of Ontario, New York, 37 F.4th 859 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 143 S. Ct. 447, 214 L. Ed. 2d 254 (2022)

In a related tax foreclosure case, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision requiring refund to the homeowner, after a tax foreclosure auction, of the auction surplus, after the tax arrears are paid. Tyler v. Hennepin Cnty., Minnesota, 598 U.S. 631, 143 S. Ct. 1369, (2023) Up until then, homeowners faced loss of their entire equity for a relatively small amount of tax arrears.   We were able to file a number of tax surplus cases in Steuben County and obtain badly need refunds for our clients, on consent of the county.   In Allegany County, where initially the County opposed returning the surplus, we obtained a favorable memorandum decision. Ahl v. Allegany County, Index Number: 49940 (Allegany Co. Sup. Ct. 2023)

With the assistance of a Gallogly Family Foundation fellow, Liam O’Halloran-Veazey, we are litigating a relatively new statute, RPL § 233-b, which limits rent increases in manufactured home parks. Our clients are senior citizens on fixed incomes, who own their manufactured homes, and fear being priced out of the park by annual rent increases.  RPL § 233-b was designed to limit increase to 3% per year but allows 6% rent increase under exceptional circumstances. The large, manufactured home park at issue, with nearly two hundred units, has raised the rent by 6% for four consecutive years.   The cases we filed are currently in the deposition stage. There does not appear to be any other case law on this issue.

Kristin Brown, President & CEO, Empire Justice Center
Kristin Brown has spent her career advocating for the civil legal rights of low-income New Yorkers. A graduate of Hartwick College and a Rockefeller College of Public Affairs Center for Women in Government Fellow, she is most proud of being part of the effort to expand access to legal and financial resources that help to put food on the table and keep families in their homes across the state of New York every day. Over the course of 18 years, Kristin built Empire Justice Center’s policy and government relations practice into a well-known source of legal expertise at the state capitol and worked in coalition with other civil legal aid and nonprofit agencies to push for changes to the law, grounded in solving challenges faced by marginalized communities. She helped found and lead numerous successful advocacy campaigns that now provide hundreds of millions of dollars annually to support the provision of civil legal services to low-income New Yorkers. She was named President and CEO of Empire Justice Center in July of 2019. Over the past five years, Kristin has worked at the state and national level to bring the most pressing needs of civil legal services agencies and clients to the attention of decision makers. She has also focused on strengthening Empire Justice Center’s 360 degree approach to systems change – we practice the law, we teach the law, we change the law — which combines policy advocacy, impact litigation, training and legal support to maximize impact, always with a focus on supporting and collaborating with community and legal organizations who serve the same communities. Prior to joining Empire Justice Center, Kristin worked in several not-for-profit roles and small business management. After several years of serving on the Board of Directors, including leading their advocacy committee, Kristin was elected President of the New York Legal Services Coalition this past spring. She was a statewide leader in the effort to protect the Interest on Lawyers Account (IOLA). Kristin is also a member of the Office of Court Administration’s Permanent Commission on Access to Justice, a member of the New York Child Poverty Reduction Advisory Council Public Assistance Committee, a member of the New York State Bar Association’s Committee on Legal Aid, a Board member of JustCause in Rochester, NY and an Associate member of the Hartwick College Alumni Board of Directors.

Denison Ray Civil Award for Nonprofit Organization

Legal Services of the Hudson Valley
The mission of Legal Services of the Hudson Valley (LSHV) is to provide high quality counsel in civil matters for low-income individuals and families and other vulnerable persons who do not have access to legal representation to maintain their basic needs, and to pursue equity through dismantling systemic oppression. This includes urgent legal matters such as:  domestic violence, housing emergencies like eviction and foreclosure, healthcare, disability benefits, elder law, consumer fraud and much more.

2022 Denison Ray and Phil Dailey Awards Winners Biographies

Denison Ray Civil Awards Civil Legal Services Staff Attorney

Catherine Callery, Esq., Senior Attorney & DAP Statewide Coordinator
Catherine M. (Kate) Callery was a Disability Advocacy Project (DAP) State Support attorneys at the Empire Justice Center in Rochester, New York, focusing on Social Security and Supplemental Security Income disability issues until her retirement in June 2022. She is a graduate of Smith College and the University of Connecticut Law School. Kate joined the Empire Justice Center in 1984 as a staff attorney in the newly formed DAP program with what was then Monroe County Legal Assistance Corporation. She continued in that role at PILOR (the Public Interest Law Office of Rochester) and then accepted the position of DAP Statewide Coordinator at GULP (Greater Upstate Law Project) in 2001 before GULP and PILOR merged to become the Empire Justice Center. She previously worked at Legal Aid in Hartford, Connecticut, and the Monroe County Public Defender’s office. She is admitted to practice in Connecticut (retired) and New York, as well the United States District Court for the Western District of New York and the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Kate has presented trainings at the National Organization of Social Security Claimants’ Representatives (NOSSCR), the New York State Bar Association, the Monroe County Bar Association and many DAP conferences and Task Force meetings.  She has represented numerous clients before the Social Security Administration and in federal court, including representation of plaintiffs in the Schisler cases, one of the most well-known series of Social Security decisions in the Second Circuit.

Mallory Livingston, Esq. Director of LGBT* Rights Program, Volunteer Lawyers Project of CNY, Inc.
Mallory was born in Buffalo, NY and grew up in Syracuse, NY as the second oldest child in a large family.  I graduated from HS in 1978 and from SUNY Cornell in 1983 with a B.S in Agricultural Economics. I graduated from Syracuse University College of Law in 1987 and have been practicing law in NYS for 33 years.

Over the years I have worked for Patton Boggs in their Greensboro, NC Office, the City of Syracuse as an Asst. Corp. Counsel, Coulter, Fraser, Bolton, Bird and Ventre as a litigator here in Syracuse, and Sassani & Schenck in Liverpool, N.Y. as a litigator.

I have been an activist for trans civil rights since 1989.  I first “came-out” as trans in 1993 and shortly thereafter I was fired. I abandoned my effort to transition until 2012 when I tried again and was again fired. I completed transition in November of 2013.

In 1989 I was the Treasurer and Outreach Director for Eon, one of the largest TG support groups in upstate NY.  In that capacity I helped to form the New York State Gender Coalition, the first statewide TG support coalition. During those times I worked with some of the earliest pioneers for civil rights such as Joann Roberts, founder of Renaissance. Yvonne Cook of the International Federation for Gender Education and Virginia Prince.

In 2010, my husband and I formed the Transgender Alliance, a federation of upstate and western NY transgender support groups. We successfully initiated legislative efforts to pass a TG nondiscrimination ordinance in the City of Syracuse in the fall of 2012.

I also served for 4 years on the Syracuse Citizen’s Review Board which provides citizen oversight of the Syracuse Police Department.

I started my own firm representing only trans and non-binary persons beginning in 2012. During this time I frequently was invited to speak to various organizations about trans related legal issues by the Volunteer Lawyers Project of Onondaga County, Inc. This lead to my being hired to serve as the Director of their LGBT Law Program which began in May of 2019.

I have two children, both in theatre, one in school and one recently graduated from Syracuse University. My husband and I live with our two dogs, Mazie and Gerty in the city of Syracuse.

Program:  The LGBT Rights Program of the Volunteer Lawyers Project of CNY, Inc. began in 2019 with the modest goal of providing direct representation for LGBTQNB+ persons in a 13-county area in Central New York. Initial projections were for 45 name changes a year and 10-15 discrimination cases. In its first three years, the program has completed 408 trans and non-binary name changes, 50 discrimination cases and has done work in 42 counties north of the Bronx.

In addition to direct representation, the program supports local organizations to assist them in providing for the needs of the LGBTQNB community by staging presentations on relevant areas of the law.  Thus far, the program has reached over 2,600 members of the community, our allies and our care providers.

Our program is supported by Cornell University Law School where each semester 4-8 students are selected to provide legal services and assistance through the LGBT Law Clinic practicum. The students have regularly volunteered their time on weekends on their vacations to help us amplify the program to assist as many persons as possible.

The program has also participated in creating and supporting new legislation of vital importance to the community including the Gender Recognition Act and the Fair Share Insurance Law. The program originated the idea of making eligibility for bidding on state contracts conditioned on would be contractors having health insurance policies which provide the gender affirming care required by NYS Law.

Legal Service Director

Jill Bradshaw-Soto, Chief Program Officer, Legal Services of the Hudson Valley
Jill Bradshaw-Soto joined Legal Services of the Hudson Valley in 1998 as a housing attorney in the White Plains office.  In the first few years, Jill practiced in the areas of housing, family and disability law and was subsequently named Managing Attorney of the Yonkers office.  A few years later, Jill was promoted to Attorney-in-Charge of the Mt. Vernon office which had recently opened.  In this role, Jill prioritized community legal education and engagement and during her tenure managed to triple the size of the office prior to assuming her current position as Chief Program Officer.  As Chief Program Officer, Jill oversees the programs and supervisors of 9 local offices and has focused her efforts on staff training and merging the areas of program and grants to ensure high quality, accessible and sustainable legal assistance.

Prior to joining LSHV, Jill’s experienced included a position as a Special Assistant Corporation Counsel for the City of New York’s Administration for Children’s Services and as a Legal Advocate in the Osborne Association’s Alternative to Incarceration Program in the Bronx.  Jill also studied abroad at the International Court of Justice in Holland as a Ford Foundation Fellowship Scholar where she focused on international human rights law.

Jill earned her BS degree from Guilford College in Greensboro, NC and her paralegal certification from Mercy College prior to entering law school at the Benjamin Cardozo School of Law, where she was a member of the Criminal Law Clinic which is currently known as the “Innocence Project”.

In addition to her legal work, Jill is active in her community by having served on her Village’s Taxi Commission and currently on the Ethics Committee.  She is also passionate about giving back and has participated in various mentoring programs that focus on mentorship for young woman of color.  One of Jill’s favorite quotes is “If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. If you teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime” Throughout her legal career Jill has prioritized community legal education and empowerment believing that providing legal knowledge enables underserved communities to be heard, to protect themselves and demand justice.

For the last 24 years Jill has been married to her husband, Hector Soto, and they have four children and three grandchildren.

Pro Bono Program Director

Jacqueline Adorno, Managing Attorney, Mobilization for Justice, Inc.
Jacqueline Adorno is Supervising Attorney of MFJ’s Kinship Caregiver Law Project, which works to prevent children from entering the traditional foster care system by helping relatives to secure orders of custody or guardianship or to adopt the children in their care. As a staff attorney, Ms. Adorno expanded the Project’s work in the Bronx, conducting regular legal clinics at Bronx Family Court and developing a collaborative project with Bridge Builders, a coalition of Bronx social service organizations, to expand services to Bronx families. She serves as the co-chair of the NYC Kincare Task Force, a coalition of kincare service providers working to promote policies to better address the needs of the kincare community.

Ms. Adorno creates new pro bono initiatives, thus expanding the scope of services offered at MFJ. Ms. Adorno leads MFJ’s efforts in recruiting pro bono counsel. She also plays a direct role with training pro bono volunteers by developing comprehensive training manuals, leading CLE trainings, and offering ongoing mentorship to pro bono counsel. A 2011 graduate of Fordham University School of Law, Ms. Adorno served as the Notes and Articles Editor of the Environmental Law Review.  Before joining MFJ,

Ms. Adorno was a post-graduate fellow in the Kings County District Attorney’s Office, Domestic Violence Bureau and worked in private practice.

Phil Dailey Award Winner

Ronald Nellons, Legal Assistant, Legal Aid Society of Mid-New York, Inc.
Ronald Nellons was born in Syracuse, New York in 1950.  He attended the Syracuse City School District and graduated from high school in 1968.  He then attended Cortland State University for two years, and took courses at the University College in Syracuse, New York.  In March 1971 he began his career at Onondaga Neighborhood Legal Services, which later became Legal Services of Central New York (LSCNY), as a legal assistant.  For many years, Mr. Nellons served as a court services monitor, and represented low-income clients in Medicaid and SNAP fair hearings, Social Security disability hearings, and Unemployment Insurance Benefit hearings.

In January 2004, LSCNY and the Legal Aid Society of Mid-New York, Inc. (LASMNY) reorganized, and Mr. Nellons joined LASMNY as a senior legal assistant.  Since 2004, Mr. Nellons has continued to represent clients in Social Security disability hearings.  With over fifty-one years of representing low-income clients, Mr. Nellons has assisted thousands of individuals in obtaining and preserving their public benefits.  He is also married with three children, eight grandchildren, four great-grandchildren, and continues to reside in Syracuse, New York.