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Open Door Policy

New York Lawyer
September 28, 2007

By Thomas Adcock
New York Law Journal

Opportunity literally knocked on Robert D. McCreanor's door one evening in 2002 when some of his fellow tenants in a Queens apartment house heard their new neighbor was a lawyer.

Maybe not the kind of lawyer who specialized in the immediate problem - at the time, Mr. McCreanor had just signed on to the trial bureau of the Manhattan District Attorney's Office - but maybe the nice young Harvard Law School graduate in 6-D could find it in his heart to help a few immigrants who regularly paid rent to a landlord they saw as hardly deserving the "lord" part of his professional title.

Mr. McCreanor did what he was asked to do. He organized a tenants union in his Woodside building and forced the owner to clean up a decidedly dirty act - filthy corridors, leaky ceilings and the sort of gaping holes in interior walls that vermin find inviting.

Then he did more. Step by step, he began building what is now a solid public interest career for himself - namely a new housing law clinic set to begin early next year, backed by St. John's University School of Law. Mr. McCreanor is to serve as clinic director and adjunct professor.

Along the way to this - an odyssey involving near bankruptcy, a nick-of-time job at a big Manhattan firm and political help from City Councilman Eric Gioia - Mr. McCreanor came to know someone who takes the name of the Lord seriously: Monsignor Ronald T. Marino, director of the Catholic Migration Office of Brooklyn and Queens.

"I made friends with the guy," said Mr. McCreanor, 31, currently an associate at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. "Over the course of a year and after several dinners, I convinced him that there was a need not being served."

Not being called to account, according to Mr. McCreanor, were shameless landlords taking advantage of immigrant and elderly tenants in rent-stabilized buildings such as his own in Woodside. Landlords knew that low-income tenants had to rely on the Legal Aid Society for assistance, and that Legal Aid was so swamped that assistance was usually not given unless a client faced eviction, he said. So why should landlords live up to their end of a lease agreement?

Monsignor Marino arranged a meeting between Mr. McCreanor and Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio of the Brooklyn diocese. The bishop agreed to provide about $100,000 of seed money for a one-man shop Mr. McCreanor christened the Tenant Advocacy Project of the Catholic Migration Office.

Whereupon, Mr. McCreanor left his day job and budgeted $40,000 of the bishop's seed money for his annual salary, a precipitous decline in income from the $60,000 pay rate at the Manhattan District Attorney's Office that just barely kept him afloat and current with a steep law school tuition debt.

"I wasn't married with kids, so I figured I could hack it," said Mr. McCreanor. "I'm still not married, much to my grandmother's disappointment."

Eight months into running his one-man shop from a small office on Queens Boulevard in 2005, Mr. McCreanor found his personal finances "in dire circumstances - crushed" as he put it. So he wheedled a little more money from Bishop DiMarzio. It was enough to hire an idealistic young lawyer fresh out of Brooklyn Law School - Sadia Rahman - to take over day-to-day operations while Mr. McCreanor sought employment at a rate of pay befitting a heavily indebted attorney.

"This project was my opportunity to take charge of something at a pretty early age, to develop it further and move it forward," said Ms. Rahman, now 28. "It was definitely a stretch. But it was an opportunity to work with immigrants, some of them undocumented."

Most nonprofit legal agencies, she said, are unable to advocate for the undocumented, which Ms. Rahman calls "the most marginalized community in this country at the moment."

Firm Supports Project

As for Mr. McCreanor, Paul Weiss not only hired him at a brisk salary, but encouraged him to keep tabs on the Tenant Advocacy Project in Queens as a pro bono matter for the firm. Mr. McCreanor took litigation partner Brad S. Karp at his word when, on orientation day, Mr. Karp invited new associates to pitch their own passions for pro bono, in addition to choosing among the firm's established menu of volunteer matters.

Mr. Karp, co-chair of the firm's pro bono committee, said he is pleased to give what he calls the annual "Arthur Liman" speech to newly hired associates. The speech is named for Arthur L. Liman, the former Paul Weiss partner called a "mensch, mentor, warrior for justice" in a death notice published in 1997 by The New York Times.

Mr. McCreanor is set to leave Paul Weiss in January, after only a year or so. But Mr. Karp is philosophical about it.

"Well, it happens," he said. "Rob's happy, and he's doing what he wants to do. So that's a good story for us," noting that McCreanor leaves the firm with a number of friends willing to provide pro bono counsel whenever he calls.

Two weeks ago, another big firm associate took a substantial pay cut to answer Mr. McCreanor's call for full-time help.

Anne Moffet, who said she spent "two great years" in the corporate finance department of Sidley Austin, now rounds out the three-lawyer Tenant Advocacy Project - which until new quarters are found in Queens is temporarily housed at the Catholic Migration Office in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.

The project now operates on an annual budget of about $150,000, said Mr. McCreanor, bolstered by a $5,000 grant last year from Councilman Gioia's discretionary funds, with another $25,000 allocated by Mr. Gioia for next year.

'Unusual Opportunity'

Born in Panama to American and Canadian parents involved in international finance, Ms. Moffet said, "I consider myself a migrant." She earned her J.D. at Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, with the intention of eventually becoming a public interest lawyer.

"It was a great environment at Sidley Austin, but it wasn't my environment," said Ms. Moffet, 31. The Tenant Advocacy Project, she said, is an "unusual opportunity, even in most nonprofits, to decide the kinds of cases we'd like to take, in the manner we think is most effective."

When the project becomes an official St. John's Law clinic on Jan. 5, Ms. Moffet, Ms. Rahman and Mr. McCreanor will have the help of seven to 10 students.

"It's all blended together," said Mr. Gioia, who confirmed on Wednesday that he is establishing a campaign for public advocate of New York City. "I like this a lot, I'm happy about it. It's my view of the legal system. At it's best, the law is a slingshot for David to fight Goliath."

Mr. Gioia, a lawyer himself, said of Mr. McCreanor, "Here's a guy who's smart, who recognizes that for the law to have meaning it needs to be applied equally and that a lot of people can't afford a lawyer - or don't even realize the need for one. Here's a guy who's good with a slingshot."