The McKenzie Memo
Welcome to the 2026 NYU Law Magazine.
NYU Law is many things—a world-class faculty; a network of clinics, centers, journals, and programs; a vibrant part of a remarkable city. At its core, however, it is a community of people who show up for each other. That is not an accident. It is the product of a culture we have built deliberately.
A story in this issue, “Friends for Life,” perfectly encapsulates this culture. Gary Way ’83 describes the quiet, matter-of-fact generosity of his classmates while he got on his feet at the start of a successful career. No drama. No ledger-keeping. Just the unremarkable loyalty forged between people by a shared experience: attending NYU Law.
This issue’s cover story, “Force of Impact,” explores what happens when that culture of showing up finds expression in tackling the world’s most complex problems. The Grunin Center for Law and Social Entrepreneurship—endowed by Jay Grunin ’67 and the late Linda Kalmanowitz Grunin ’67—has spent nearly a decade of fostering lawyers as the architects of deals that protect oceans, fund sustainable infrastructure, and put capital in the hands of entrepreneurs in rural areas, to name just a few projects.
The center’s extraordinary success has made the name Grunin—and by extension, NYU Law—synonymous with effective impact investing. That kind of association—built in less than 10 years—reflects the vision of Professor of Law Emerita Deborah Burand and the extraordinary community she has cultivated around the Law School’s International Transactions Clinic. With Jay Grunin’s substantial support in elevating the center to an institute, I am excited to see how this achievement and this community will grow and flourish in the decades to come.
Another feature in this issue, “Democracy’s Defenders,” takes up perhaps the most urgent questions in public law today. Three new initiatives recently launched by NYU Law faculty—the Democracy Project, established by Bob Bauer, Sam Issacharoff, and Rick Pildes; the Center for Law and Public Trust, headed by Vanita Gupta ’01; and the Rule of Law Lab, directed by Amrit Singh—are examining democratic shifts from different angles and using different tools, but with a shared conviction that NYU Law has both the expertise and the obligation to meet this exceptional moment. As lawyers, we are acutely aware that democracy and the rule of law are not abstractions. They are the foundation on which everything we do rests.
On a more local level, faculty members and centers at NYU Law are also at work on improving, reshaping, and reimagining the communities in which we live, starting with our home city of New York but not stopping there (see "Smart City"). Research and scholarship by professors Vicki Been ’83, Barry Friedman, Katrina Wyman, and Clayton Gillette are providing innovative new models to city governments in areas such as housing, policing, environmental regulation, and finance.
The threads connecting impact investing, democratic governance, urban communities, and lasting human friendships may not be obvious at first. However, as you will read in these features, as well as in the news sections highlighting the accomplishments of our students, faculty, and alumni, it soon becomes clear. They are all expressions of what lawyers, at their best, can do: solve hard problems, build durable institutions, and invest in one another for the long haul.
As Jay Grunin put it so eloquently in these pages: “Too often…lawyers have been depicted as problem creators. Here, clearly, the role of a lawyer is as a problem-solver in making this world a better place for everyone.”
I could not have said it better myself.
Warmly,
Troy McKenzie ’00