Graduate Lawyering Faculty Biographies

Ayers Faculty Portrait

Irene Segal Ayers

irene.ayers@nyu.edu
Phone: 212-998-6347
Furman Hall, Room C34

Irene Segal Ayers is Director of the Graduate Lawyering Program. She joined the NYU faculty in 2005, and has taught in both the NYU Lawyering program and the Graduate Lawyering program. Prior to joining the faculty, she practiced international intellectual property and technology law. Ayers is a 1999 graduate of the University of Cincinnati College of Law, where she was elected Order of the Coif and was awarded the Timothy Walker Founders Scholarship, the College of Law’s most prestigious scholarship. She has undergraduate and graduate degrees in English from Bryn Mawr College and the Indiana University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Before becoming a lawyer, she taught undergraduate English literature and writing for eight years.

 

Karen Ross headshot

Karen Ross

karen.ross@nyu.edu
Vanderbilt Hall, Room B45H

Karen M. Ross is the founding Director of the Legal English Program and the Deputy Director of the Graduate Lawyering Program.  She began teaching at NYU Law in 2010 as an Adjunct Professor of Law and was appointed to the full time faculty in 2015.  Before teaching, Ms. Ross worked in private practice and as a law clerk to judges in the state court system. She also served as an administrative law judge in New York City for various city agencies. Ms. Ross received a Master’s Degree in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) from New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development, a Juris Doctor from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, and a Bachelor of Arts, cum laude, from Tufts University. Ms. Ross is the author of Essential Legal English in Context: Understanding the Vocabulary of US Law and Government (NYU Press, 2019).

 

Alice Burke Headshot

Alice E. Burke

aeb13@nyu.edu

Alice Estill Burke teaches in the Graduate Lawyering Program. She began teaching at NYU as an Adjunct Professor of Graduate Lawyering in 2019 and was appointed to the full-time Graduate Lawyering Program faculty in 2020. Ms. Burke has also served as an Adjunct Professor of Practice at Seton Hall University in Newark, New Jersey and as a Writing Specialist at the John Marshall Law School in Chicago, Illinois. Before entering academia, Ms. Burke represented management in labor and employment matters both in private practice and as in-house counsel. Ms. Burke graduated magna cum laude from Georgetown University Law Center, where she was elected to the Order of the Coif. She received her B.A., magna cum laude, from Mississippi University for Women.

 

Susan Chung portrait

Susan Chung

susan.chung@nyu.edu

Susan Chung joined the Graduate Lawyering Program faculty in 2021 after teaching Legal Writing at Fordham Law School for over fifteen years.  At Fordham, she also ran the LL.M. Legal Writing Program as the Legal Writing Coordinator.  Prior to teaching, she was an attorney at the Bronx Defenders.  She also served as a judicial law clerk to Honorable Maryanne Trump Barry of U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and to Honorable Robert Ward of U.S. District Court, S.D.N.Y.  She received her J.D. from Fordham University School of Law, where she was an editor of the Law Review, Crowley Scholar in International Human Rights, and Stein Scholar in Public Interest Law.  She received her M.A. and B.A. from Columbia University. 

 

Amanda Sen headshot

Amanda Sen Villalobos 

amandasen@nyu.edu

Amanda Sen Villalobos teaches in the Graduate Lawyering Program. Before joining the full-time faculty of the Graduate Lawyering Program in 2022, she litigated family and special education matters in court and administrative proceedings as a legal services attorney. Ms. Sen Villalobos taught in the J.D. Lawyering Program at NYU Law from 2016 to 2019 and also served as an Adjunct Professor of Business Law at Marist College in Poughkeepsie from 2021 to 2022. 

Ms. Sen Villalobos earned her J.D. from NYU Law, where she was a Root-Tilden-Kern (Sinsheimer) Scholar and an Executive Editor of the NYU Law Review. She received her B.A., magna cum laude, from Washington University in St. Louis and also earned an M.A.Ed. from Washington University in St. Louis.

 

Rachael Liebert

Rachael Liebert 

rachael.liebert@law.nyu.edu

Rachael Liebert is a member of the full-time faculty of the Graduate Lawyering Program. She previously taught at NYU in the J.D. Lawyering Program from 2018 to 2022, and served as the Associate Director of the Lawyering Program from 2021-2022. Before returning to NYU, Rachael worked to improve indigent defense systems across the country as an attorney at the Sixth Amendment Center. Rachael began her legal career as a public defender in Boston, where she spent five years representing clients charged with misdemeanors and felonies in all aspects of their criminal cases. Rachael received her J.D. from NYU Law and her B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania.

 

Gerald Lebovits headshot

Gerald Lebovits

gerald.lebovits@nyu.edu

Gerald Lebovits is an Adjunct Professor in the Graduate Lawyering program. A judge since 2001, Justice Lebovits presides in the New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan. He previously presided in the New York City Civil Court, the New York City Criminal Court, and the New York City Housing Court. After completing his Civil Law license in French at the University of Ottawa in Canada in 1979, he received a Master of Civil Law at Tulane University School of Law in 1980 and, in 1986, an LL.M. from NYU, where he studied international and comparative criminal justice. This is his 35th year teaching law. Students at three law schools have elected him Adjunct Professor of the Year.

 

Nicholas W. Haddad

Nicholas W. Haddad 

nwh5581@nyu.edu

Nicholas William Haddad is an Adjunct Professor in the Graduate Lawyering Program.  He also serves as Senior Legal Editor at Practical Law, where he writes and speaks on all aspects of federal civil litigation, and teaches First-Year Legal Writing at Fordham Law School, where he was named the 2018 Adjunct Teacher of the Year.


Previously, Mr. Haddad was a member of Jones Day’s Issues & Appeals group.  His practice focused on appellate litigation and motion practice in both state and federal courts.  Before that, he clerked for the Honorable Robert A. Katzmann of the U.S. Court of Appeals, Second Circuit, and the Honorable Jed S. Rakoff of the U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York.  Mr. Haddad began his legal career as a litigation associate at Davis Polk & Wardwell.  


Mr. Haddad graduated summa cum laude from Fordham Law School, where he served as an Associate Editor of the Fordham Law Review and was elected to the Order of the Coif.  He received his A.B., magna cum laude, from Georgetown University.