HARLAN A. LEVY is a partner at Boies, Schiller & Flexner. He served as Chief Deputy Attorney of the State of New York from 2011-2015. He joined that office as its second ranking official on January 1, 2011, Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s first day in office, building its top staff with the Attorney General.
As Chief Deputy Attorney General, Mr. Levy helped oversee the office’s most important investigations and cases, including enforcement against financial institutions relating to their sales of mortgage backed securities; an antitrust challenge to block AT&T Inc.’s proposed acquisition of T-Mobile; a successful initiative to reduce smartphone theft by driving that industry to implement technological solutions to render stolen devices inoperable; public integrity prosecutions and convictions of numerous public officials and non-profit executives; and the successful defense of New York’s gun control and marriage equality laws. Mr. Levy also served as Counsel to the Attorney General. He represented New York in the National Association of Attorneys General, working with AGs from across the United States.
Mr. Levy previously was a partner at Boies, Schiller & Flexner from July 1, 2000 through December 31, 2010. He defended white collar investigations and prosecutions, conducted internal investigations, and litigated antitrust, financial fraud, product liability, and trade secret cases, representing clients including Delta Air Lines, Pfizer, DuPont and Tyco International. During that time he chaired the Council on Criminal Justice of the New York City Bar Association, chaired Attorney General-Elect Schneiderman’s transition team, and co-chaired the Special Victims Committee of District Attorney-Elect Cyrus R. Vance’s transition team.
Mr. Levy earlier served as an Assistant District Attorney in New York County, where he was a homicide and financial crimes prosecutor in the office of Robert M. Morgenthau, and had a 94% trial conviction rate. He is a member of that office’s Trial Advocacy Faculty. Mr. Levy was an early national leader in the use of DNA to convict the guilty and exonerate the innocent. He is the author of “And the Blood Cried Out,” published by Basic Books/HarperCollins, a “highly regarded book about the use of DNA in the courtroom,” The New York Times, reviewed as “superb” by The Wall Street Journal and “riveting” by Publishers’ Weekly, and also published as a mass market paperback and in a Japanese edition.
Mr. Levy is a graduate of Amherst College and Columbia Law School. He served as law clerk to Judge Leonard P. Moore of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and then practiced as a litigation associate at Cahill Gordon & Reindel. Mr. Levy is married to Kelly O’Neill Levy, a Justice of the Supreme Court of the State of New York, New York County, and they have two children.
Hon. Jonathan Lippman, 2016 Career Public Service Award
THE HONORABLE JONATHAN LIPPMAN, former Chief Judge of New York and Chief Judge of the New York Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, is Of Counsel in the New York office of Latham & Watkins and a member of the firm’s Litigation & Trial Department. He provides strategic counsel to clients on New York Law and appellate matters nationwide, and is a leader of the firm’s pro bono practice.
Judge Lippman served as Chief Judge of the State of New York and Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals from February 2009 through December 2015. During his tenure on the Court of Appeals, Chief Judge Lippman authored major decisions addressing constitutional, statutory, and common law issues shaping the law of New York, the contours of state government, and the lives of all New Yorkers.
As the state’s Chief Judge, he championed equal access to justice issues in New York and around the country and took the leadership role in identifying permanent funding streams for civil legal services. Chief Judge Lippman made New York the first state in the country to require 50 hours of law-related pro bono work prior to bar admission and established the Pro Bono Scholars and Poverty Justice Solutions Programs to help alleviate the crisis in civil legal services. He strengthened the state’s indigent criminal defense system, addressed the systemic causes of wrongful convictions, created Human Trafficking Courts across New York State, and led efforts to reform New York’s juvenile justice, bail and pre-trial justice systems. Chief Judge Lippman championed the commercial division as a world class venue for business litigation, reformed the state’s attorney disciplinary system, adopted the Uniform Bar Exam, and succeeded in the creation of a statewide salary commission for judges.
Chief Judge Lippman has served at all levels of the New York State Court system in a career spanning more than four decades, including service as a staff attorney, administrator and judge. From January 1996 to May 2007, he served as the longest-tenured Chief Administrative Judge in state history, playing a central role in many far-reaching reforms of New York’s judiciary and its legal profession. From May 2007 to 2009, he served as the Presiding Justice of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court, First Department, dramatically reducing the court’s pending backlogs.
In 2006, the Fund for Modern Courts recognized Chief Judge Lippman as its Cyrus R. Vance Tribute honoree because of his central role in many reforms in New York, including the establishment of problem-solving community courts, domestic violence courts, integrated domestic violence courts and drug courts; creation of specialized commercial and matrimonial parts; extensive reform of the jury system; creation of new rules governing fiduciary appointments; and other reforms that promote public confidence in judicial elections.