Faculty

After graduating from the University of Cincinnati College of Law in 1974, Brookes Billman LLM ’75 came to NYU School of Law for an LLM in taxation. Upon completing his legal education, Billman practiced in Washington, DC, before returning to New York to pursue an academic career at the Law School. He has written extensively in the area of tax law (most recently publishing two editions of a casebook on tax procedure) and teaches a wide range of tax courses to both JD and LLM students. In addition, Billman teaches Employee Benefits Law as well as Legislation and the Regulatory State in the JD curriculum. Billman served for many years as a Law School administrator, first as director of the Graduate Tax Program, then as associate dean of the Graduate Division, and finally as associate dean for Planning and Technology. In the latter role, Billman directed the Law School’s early initiatives in upgrading classrooms and seminar rooms to include the latest pedagogical technology and served as faculty chair of the Building Committee for the construction of Furman Hall and the renovation of Vanderbilt Hall.

Sarah Burns supervises the Reproductive Justice Clinic, which represents clients throughout the United States in litigation and policy projects centering on reproductive decision making. Burns is executive director of Washington Square Legal Services, the nonprofit entity under which most NYU Clinical Law Programs practice law. Burns also co-founded and oversees the Mediation Clinic and the Litigation, Organizing & Systemic Change Clinic, conducted in partnership with Make the Road NY and Center for Popular Democracy. Burns combines law with learning in social science to develop effective solutions for problems that institutions and communities face. Burns, who has been on the NYU faculty since 1990, specializes in experiential learning pedagogy, developing simulation and clinical courses in litigation, negotiation, mediation, policy advocacy, and systemic change. Burns began her law practice as a litigating attorney with the Washington, DC, commercial law firm Covington & Burling, representing industry associations in federal regulatory matters that Burns cites as “a key introduction to interest-based and advocacy legal practice so central to all negotiation and coalition work—whether in for-profit or not-for-profit/NGO sectors.” Burns later moved into public interest civil rights practice, undertaking litigation, legislative, and policy advocacy work. She has worked nationwide on cases in federal and state courts, and has advised legislative and regulatory initiatives. Burns graduated in 1979 from Yale Law School, where she edited the Yale Law Journal, and holds master’s degrees from Stanford University in sociology and the University of Oklahoma in human relations.

Paulette Caldwell is an expert on race and civil rights with a concentration on discrimination in employment and public education law. She speaks and writes on a range of issues including critical race theory, the intersection of race and gender, disparate impact theory, and the fair governance of public schools. She is an honors graduate of Howard University School of Law, where she served as managing editor of the law review, and of Howard University College of Liberal Arts. Prior to joining the Law School in 1979, she served for a decade at the Ford Foundation and the law firm of Patterson, Belknap, Webb & Tyler, specializing in real estate transactions and the corporate and tax representation of charitable and other nonprofit organizations. She has served as a consultant to and board member of numerous nonprofit organizations and is currently a member of the board of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

Cynthia Estlund is a leading scholar of labor and employment law and workplace governance. Her new book, A New Deal for China’s Workers? (2017), takes a comparative look at labor unrest and reform in China. In her previous book, Regoverning the Workplace: From Self-Regulation to Co-Regulation (2010), she chronicled the current crisis of workplace governance in the US and charted a potential path forward. Her first book, Working Together: How Workplace Bonds Strengthen a Diverse Democracy (2003), argued that the workplace is a site of both comparatively successful integration and intense cooperation, and explored the implications for democratic theory and for the law of work. Other writings focus on freedom of speech and procedural fairness at work; diversity, integration, and affirmative action; critical perspectives on labor law; and transnational labor rights and regulation. Before joining NYU School of Law in 2006, Estlund taught at the University of Texas and Columbia Law School. Estlund graduated summa cum laude from Lawrence University in 1978. She earned her JD at Yale Law School in 1983.

Samuel Estreicher is a nationally preeminent scholar in US and international-comparative labor and employment law and arbitration law. He has authored more than a dozen books, including Beyond Elite Law: Access to Civil Justice in America (with Joy Radice, Cambridge Univ. 2016); leading casebooks on legislation and regulatory state, labor law and employment discrimination and employment law; and published more than 200 articles in professional and academic journals. He served as Chief Reporter for the American Law Institute’s Restatement of Employment Law (2015). After clerking for Judge Harold Leventhal of the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, practicing in a labor law firm, and clerking for Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. of the US Supreme Court, Estreicher joined the NYU School of Law faculty in 1978. In addition to serving as counsel to major law firms, he is the former secretary of the Labor and Employment Law Section of the American Bar Association, a former chair of the Committee on Labor and Employment Law of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York.15). He maintains an active appellate and ADR practice. The Labor and Employment Research Association awarded him its 2010 Susan C. Eaton Award for Outstanding Scholar-Practitioner. In recent years, Estreicher also has published work in public international law and authored several briefs in the Supreme Court and US courts of appeals on employment and US foreign relations law issues. Estreicher received his BA from Columbia College, his MS in industrial relations from Cornell University, and his JD from Columbia Law School, where he was editor-in-chief of the Columbia Law Review. He is a member of the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers and was appointed in 2016 by the UN Secretary General as a member of the UN’s Internal Justice Commission.

For more than three decades, Paula Galowitz has concentrated her teaching, scholarship, and bar association work on improving legal services for the indigent. Today she is widely known both as a clinical teacher and as an expert on civil legal services for indigent clients. A graduate of Brooklyn Law School, Galowitz clerked for Judge Jacob D. Fuchsberg of the New York State Court of Appeals before joining the Civil Division of the New York Legal Aid Society. In 1980, she came to NYU School of Law. Galowitz taught in the Community Development and Economic Justice Clinic, in which students provided legal services to grassroots community groups; in their fieldwork, the students represented clients in transactional matters and litigation cases. Galowitz has also taught in the Medical-Legal Advocacy Clinic, which employed a multidisciplinary and holistic approach to providing on-site legal advocacy assistance and training to medical providers. For many years, she taught in the Civil Legal Services Clinic. Some of her scholarship has been about interdisciplinary clinical teaching and ethical issues in medical-legal partnerships. Galowitz also teaches a simulation course on civil litigation and has taught a seminar called Professional Responsibility in the Public Interest. She is currently on the board of trustees of the Interest on Lawyer Account Fund of the State of New York and on the board of directors of the Center for the Study of Applied Legal Education.

Deborah Malamud is a leader among legal academics who study issues of class and public policy, as well as an expert on labor and employment law. Her contributions to the study of class and the law focus on how the law reflects and helps shape our understanding of what it means to be a member of the middle class in the United States. Malamud is also known for her doctrinal and historical scholarship on key issues in labor law and employment discrimination doctrine, including affirmative action. Malamud served as the faculty director of the AnBryce Scholarship Program at NYU School of Law from 2004 to 2011. She viewed her involvement with this unique community of scholars as both an honor and a distinctive opportunity. Malamud was on the faculty of the University of Michigan Law School from 1992 to 2003. Before embarking on her academic career, she was a law clerk to Judge Louis Pollak, US District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, and Justice Harry Blackmun of the US Supreme Court. Malamud received her BA from Wesleyan University and her JD from the University of Chicago Law School.

Laura Sager focuses on employment and housing discrimination law and on training law students in litigation skills. As a clinical professor at NYU School of Law, she has been lead counsel, assisted by clinic students, in significant class actions challenging discrimination in the workplace, including a landmark case that invalidated New York City’s entry-level test for firefighters and enabled women to serve as firefighters for the first time in the city’s history. In recent years, students in her clinic have honed their litigation skills in cases challenging discrimination in housing opportunities as well as sexual and racial harassment, age discrimination, and disability discrimination in the workplace. After graduating from Wellesley College, Sager received an MA in history from Harvard University and a JD from UCLA School of Law. She clerked for Judge Irving Hill in the Central District of California and then spent several years as a litigator in New York before joining the Law School faculty. Sager’s latest research has focused on the taxation of damage awards and attorneys’ fees in civil rights actions.