Lecturer Bios
Ronald C. Minkoff, Esq.
Ronald C. Minkoff is a partner in the Litigation Group and Head of the Professional Responsibility Group. Mr. Minkoff is also one of New York State’s leading practitioners in the field of attorney ethics and professional responsibility, representing attorneys in a wide variety of matters including law firm partnership disputes, disciplinary cases, legal fee disputes and legal malpractice and professional liability cases on behalf of both plaintiffs and defendants. He also provides ethics opinions and advice to a wide variety of law firm clients.
Mr. Minkoff is a member of several Bar Ethics Committees, including the Committee on Standards of Attorney Conduct (COSAC) and the Committee on Professional Discipline of the New York State Bar Association. He is also the Chair of the Task Force on Professionalism of the New York County Lawyers Association, a former member of the American Bar Association Standing Committee on Professionalism, and a past President of the Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers. He is a member of the Media Law Resource Center (MLRC) ethics committee and has written extensively for the New York Professional Responsibility Report, The Professional Lawyer, The New York Law Journal, and other publications. Mr. Minkoff is an Adjunct Professor of Professional Responsibility at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. He has also served as an Adjunct Professor at New York University School of Law, Fordham Law School, and Brooklyn Law School. He is a frequent lecturer on the law of lawyering.
In addition, Mr. Minkoff represents businesses and individual professionals and executives in a wide variety of commercial litigation, including business break-ups, securities lawsuits, and domestic and international trade disputes. He represents several law firm partners in partnership disputes. And he represents an internationally known petrochemist in an oil and gas venture dispute. Mr. Minkoff was recently appointed to the Advisory Committee of the Commercial Division of the Supreme Court, New York County and was a member of Chief Judge Lippman’s Task Force on Commercial Litigation in the 21st Century. He is also a member of the Council on Judicial Administration of the New York City Bar Association.
Mr. Minkoff is a graduate of Columbia Law School (JD, 1980). He was an attorney at the Nassau County Legal Aid Society (1980-83), and was associated with Obermaier Morvillo & Abramowitz, P.C. (1983-85) and Owen & Fennell (1985-87). Mr. Minkoff was a member of Fennell & Minkoff (1987-94) and Beldock Levine & Hoffman (1994-2001) before joining Frankfurt Kurnit.
Representative cases: Grynberg v. BP Explorations Operating Co. Ltd. 92 A.D.3d 547 938 N.Y.S.2d 439 (2012); Frauzblau v. Cassin and Cassin LLP Index: 105949/10 Supreme Court New York County (2010); Carl v. Cohen and Greenberg Traurig, LLP 23 Misc.3d 1110(A) 886 N.Y.S.2d 66 (2009); Conopco, Inc. v. Wein, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 46945 (S.D.N.Y. 2007); Trepel v. Dippold, 2006 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 78050 (S.D.N.Y. 2006); Goetz v. Volpe and R & L Leasing, LLC, 11 Misc.3d 632, 812 N.Y.S.2d 294 (2006).
Nicole I. Hyland, Esq.
Nicole Hyland is a partner in the Litigation Group and Professional Responsibility Group at Frankfurt Kurnit. Her practice focuses primarily on legal ethics, professional responsibility, and legal malpractice.
Ms. Hyland counsels attorneys and law firms on conflicts of interest, legal fee disputes, escrow issues, disqualification motions, multijurisdictional law practice, business transactions with clients, lateral transitions, law firm formation and break-ups, advertising and social media use, and other professional responsibility issues. Ms. Hyland also represents defendants and plaintiffs in legal malpractice and breach of fiduciary duty disputes.
In addition to her legal ethics and professional responsibility practice, Ms. Hyland has an active litigation practice, focusing on art, literature, and entertainment industry disputes. She handles copyright, trademark, right of publicity, and defamation claims, as well as disputes over financing, production, distribution, and talent agreements. She counsels art, literature, and entertainment industry clients on content issues, including copyright, trademark, right of publicity, television formatting rights, privacy, defamation, and fair use.
Ms. Hyland is Chair of the Committee on Professional Ethics of the New York City Bar Association (NYCBA). In that role, she oversees the City Bar’s ethics hotline, which provides ethical guidance to lawyers from all over New York State. She also oversees the drafting of informal and formal ethics opinions on a variety of topics, including: non-refundable flat fee arrangements, the use of Professional Employer Organizations by law firms, the ethics of using a virtual law office, ethical guidelines for accepting credit cards, and business arrangements between law firms and nonlegal organizations.
Ms. Hyland serves as Co-Chair for the Ethics Committees of the Women’s Bar Association of the State of New York (WBASNY) and the New York Women’s Bar Association (NYWBA) – WBASNY’s New York City chapter. For the past two years she has hosted the NYWBA annual meeting at Frankfurt Kurnit followed by an Ethics CLE program for NYWBA members and attendees.
Ms. Hyland serves on the Board of the Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers (APRL) and is a member of the New York State Bar Association Committee for Standards on Attorney Conduct (COSAC). She is also a member of the American Bar Association’s Center for Professional Responsibility.
Ms. Hyland writes and lectures frequently on legal ethics and professional responsibility issues. She recently joined Professor Roy Simon as a co-author on his seminal treatise: Simon’s New York Rules of Professional Conduct Annotated (2015 ed.). She is on the editorial board of the New York Legal Ethics Reporter and contributes to the Legal Ethics Forum blog.
Follow Nicole on Twitter @NiHyland, connect with her on LinkedIn, “Like” her Facebook page, or view her documents on JD Supra.
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