NEW YORK (August 15, 2019) — Kostelanetz & Fink is pleased to announce that The Best Lawyers in America has recognized six of its attorneys in its 2020 edition. The Best Lawyers in America (2020 edition), released August 15, 2019, recognizes the firm’s attorneys in the areas of Litigation and Controversy – Tax, Tax Law, Commercial Litigation, and Criminal Defense: White Collar. The annual list is based on a peer review process and reflects the consensus opinion of leading lawyers about the professional abilities of their peers within the same geographical regions and practice areas, according to the Best Lawyers website.  

The new data came in response to an appeal by seven students who said the recent expansion of Discovery had unfairly denied them seats in the specialized schools. They asked the state commissioner this spring to ensure they get spots and declare the city’s implementation of Discovery unlawful.

For this fall, the mayor has vastly expanded the Discovery program, which offers seats and free summer tutoring to disadvantaged students who score below the test-score cutoff for regular acceptance. The mayor roughly doubled the size of Discovery, to about 500 seats this fall, or about 13% of specialized high school spots in ninth grade. That growth has sparked an outcry from parents who say their high-scoring children were edged out by Discovery students with lower exam scores. The mayor plans for Discovery students to have 20% of seats in fall of 2020. He also restricted eligibility to students from certain high-poverty middle schools.

The petitioners claim the city ignores language in state law requiring that Discovery operate “without in any manner interfering with the academic level” of the sought-after high schools.

Their lawyer, Claude Millman, rebutted the city Department of Education’s GPA analysis last week. He said the average GPA for Discovery students at a school can mask how individuals may have floundered, and their cohorts were too small to draw conclusions. Further, he said their accomplishments didn’t reflect how well a broader group with lower entrance exam scores will do in the bigger program.

Students, families and alumni of the city’s specialized high schools just got new allies in their fight to stop Mayor Bill de Blasio from destroying those elite schools.

On Monday, the Education Equity Campaign launched with a simple mission: Keep the race-blind entrance exam, address root causes of the admission gap and open more top schools to meet demand.

NEW YORK (August 15, 2018) — Kostelanetz & Fink, LLP, partners Robert S. Fink, Bryan C. Skarlatos, Sharon L. McCarthy and Claude M. Millman were selected by their peers for the The Best Lawyers in America 2019.

Topics covered included gifts, entertainment, and favors when dealing with public servants; dealing with public servants with dual positions, or those who misuse their positions; managing “revolving door” employment; and handling endorsements from governments. New York City’s conflicts of interest law was used as an example of how these issues may be regulated in particular jurisdictions.

All of the contract information could be made available online, said Claude Millman, a partner at Kostelanetz and Fink, who represents government contractors, including nonprofits, doing business with New York City and state, and a former director of the Mayor’s Office of Contract Services.

“If I decided I wanted to tell everyone about a proposed contract I could post it on Facebook, link to the contract, and allow online commenting I would read out at the hearing,” he said. “If you regularly make (the contracts) unavailable, you’re going to depress public interest in the hearings themselves.”

It's often said that ethics is a "two-way street," with many questions turning on public servants' personal interactions with firms they deal in their official capacity.   

“It’s hard to get the public engaged in a discussion about the city’s charter,” said Claude Millman, who served as a commissioner during the 2001 New York City charter revision commission and who was the executive director for the city’s 1999 commission. “It’s even harder to keep the public involved when charter revision is diffused over two, separate commissions."