NEW YORK, NY, October 21, 2022 – Kaplan Hecker & Fink LLP (KHF) announced today that Trevor Morrison and Tali Farhadian Weinstein have joined the firm as of counsel in KHF’s New York office. Morrison is the Eric M. and Laurie B. Roth Professor of Law and Dean Emeritus at New York University School of Law. Farhadian Weinstein is an Adjunct Professor at New York University School of Law as well as a Legal Analyst for NBC News and MSNBC.
Morrison served as the Dean of New York University Law School for almost a decade until 2022 and was previously on the faculty at Columbia Law School and Cornell Law School. He specializes in constitutional law, Supreme Court and appellate litigation, administrative law, and federal courts and federal jurisdiction. During his tenure as Dean, Morrison led the law school through the implementation of a far-reaching strategic plan that included dramatically increasing student financial aid and enhancing the loan repayment assistance program for students working in public interest and public service, deepening the strength of the school’s faculty across the curriculum, launching 15 new research centers in areas ranging from law and social entrepreneurship to race, inequality, and the law, and creating an assistant deanship for diversity and inclusion. Among his many recognitions, Morrison was recently awarded the President’s Distinguished Leadership Award by the NYU Law Alumni of Color Association. Morrison served in the White House as Associate Counsel to President Obama in 2009, who later appointed him to the Public Interest Declassification Board where he served from 2016 to 2020. He was also a Bristow Fellow in the Office of the Solicitor General and an attorney-advisor in the Office of Legal Counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice. In 2021, President Biden appointed him to serve on the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States.
“I am thrilled to be joining the lawyers at Kaplan Hecker & Fink,” said Morrison. “I deeply admire what the firm has created in terms of its people and culture, not to mention its track record of litigating some of the most challenging, important, and consequential cases of our time. I look forward to representing KHF clients in these matters.”
Farhadian Weinstein joins the firm after running for Manhattan District Attorney. Before that, she served as General Counsel of the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office, where she helped lead the office’s criminal justice reform agenda and created the nation’s first Post-Conviction Justice Bureau. As General Counsel, she also guided the office’s major litigation positions in NY state courts, federal court, and other fora, and served as Chief Ethics and Professional Responsibility Officer. Earlier in her career, she served at the U.S. Department of Justice as Counsel to Attorney General Eric Holder, and as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of New York, where she prosecuted and investigated cases involving gun violence, public corruption, tax fraud, and national security. Farhadian Weinstein will be focused on cases involving reproductive rights and other gender justice and constitutional issues, including under New York’s Adult Survivor Act.
“I am delighted to join the litigators at Kaplan Hecker & Fink,” noted Farhadian Weinstein. “This firm has already shattered preconceived notions in the legal industry through its firm culture and its cutting-edge public interest work, from securing a landmark verdict against neo-Nazis to fighting tirelessly for gender and LGBTQ parity. I am excited to be joining the team.”
Kaplan Hecker & Fink founding partner Roberta (“Robbie”) Kaplan added: “We are delighted to welcome Trevor and Tali to our firm. Both of them have not only impeccable resumes, formidable talent, and a wealth of valuable experience, but they each exemplify our Firm’s core values of seeking justice, whether in civil cases, criminal matters, or on appeal.”
Kaplan Hecker & Fink partner Sean Hecker said: “The addition of Trevor and Tali is a major asset to our clients and to the Firm overall. They bring with them an incredible passion and expertise, with impressive resumes of academic and legal accomplishments. We look forward to welcoming them to the team and working closely with them across an array of matters.”
Kaplan Hecker & Fink managing partner Julie Fink said: “We are so proud of the deep bench of litigation talent that we have recruited and developed in only five years since the firm’s founding in 2017. We are confident that our clients will benefit from this added surplus of brain power at our firm.”
Morrison graduated with honors from the University of British Columbia and from Columbia Law School, where he was a James Kent Scholar and a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar. He clerked for the Hon. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the U.S. Supreme Court and the Hon. Betty B. Fletcher of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He is a member of the American Law Institute and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he serves on the board of the Brennan Center for Justice.
Farhadian Weinstein received her B.A. from Yale College and her masters in Middle East Studies from Oxford University, where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar. After earning her J.D. from Yale Law School, she clerked for the Hon. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor of the U.S. Supreme Court and the Hon. Merrick Garland of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. She is also a Trustee of the New York Public Library, where she chairs the Audit Committee, a Trustee of the Vera Institute for Justice, and serves on the Board of Directors of the International Refugee Assistance Project.
For more, see news coverage by Reuters, The New York Law Journal, and Law360.