Daniel Blaze ’19 receives Recent Graduate Challenge Scholarship

Last spring, recent NYU Law alumni made a new scholarship possible with their enthusiastic response to a fundraising challenge from Alan W. Kornberg ’77. This year, Daniel Blaze ’19 became the recipient of the Recent Graduate Challenge Scholarship, awarded on the basis of merit and need. 

Daniel Blaze portrait
Daniel Blaze ’19

Blaze, currently a managing editor of the Annual Survey of American Law, says that he intends to pursue an LLM in tax law, and plans to apply to NYU Law’s joint JD-LLM program. “Obviously! It’s the best school for that,” he says. 

After growing up in Knoxville, Tennessee, Blaze studied classics at Dennison University, then worked for a year as a legal assistant in the public defender’s office in Knoxville. The experience inspired him to go to law school. Blaze says he chose NYU Law not only because of its strong reputation, but because of the scholarship aid that the school awarded him when he applied: “It made it more affordable to actually come,” he says.

He fell hard for tax law when he took Professor Lily Batchelder’s Income Taxation class in his second year. “Something about it just clicked,” he says. “I’d always appreciated more statutory classes, actually, and then she had a really great teaching style, and I liked the quantitative component of it.” He knew he’d found his niche.

“It was one of those classes that I did not mind studying for at all,” Blaze says.

His favorite experience at NYU Law, he says, came during his internship at Brooklyn Legal Services Corporation’s low-income taxpayer clinic, when he sat down on his own with a client for the first time. “That was an amazing moment.… We ended up helping the client and managed to get their problems resolved recently.”

Other highlights of his Law School career, he says, include an externship that took him to Camden, New Jersey to work on a police-youth engagement program—as well as the chance to meet US Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor when she attended last year’s Annual Survey dedication. Blaze also says he appreciates the sense of community he has found at NYU Law. 

That sense of community was on full display during last spring’s Recent Graduate Challenge, when 396 alumni made contributions to the Law School, exceeding the 350-donor threshold needed to unlock the scholarship funded by Kornberg. The average donation was just over $150; the total raised, almost $62,000. 

This year’s Recent Graduate Challenge launches on February 14. Marc Rindner ’85 has agreed to contribute $50,000 toward student scholarships if at least 450 recent graduates make a gift before May 23, Convocation Day.

Blaze says that he’s grateful to Kornberg and the alumni who participated in the 2018 challenge. “This money allows me to go to law school and do what I want to do,” he says. “I also then want to thank the recent alums.… I understand that it can be hard to get financially settled after finishing law school, and so giving any amount in that recent period is really impressive and helpful in giving back, and I appreciate it.”

Posted February 14, 2019