Hello!

I have been a member of City Tech’s Law and Paralegal Studies department since Fall 2014.  I arrived here with a variety of experience, from a long and winding road.  In 1992 I earned my bachelor’s degree in Political Science at the State University of New York at Albany in 1992.  After that, I taught Social Studies to seventh and eighth grade students at IS 318 in Williamsburg, Brooklyn for six years.  While I was teaching, I worked toward my master’s degree in Urban Affairs at CUNY-Queens College.  I took a detour in 1999 when I decided to earn a law degree.  I started in Brooklyn Law School’s part-time evening program, and continued teaching at IS 318 during the day.  After one year, I transferred to Columbia Law School where I attended full-time and graduated in 2002.

After law school, I clerked for one year for U.S. Magistrate Judge Debra Freeman in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.  Then I worked as a commercial litigator with the firm of Constantine Cannon LLP in New York for nine years, representing plaintiffs and defendants in a variety of business competition matters.  During that time, I started teaching Legal Research and Writing as an adjunct professor at Cardozo Law School.  I loved it!  I left my firm to join the New York Office of the Attorney General, in the Enforcement Section of its Charities Bureau.  I continued teaching at Cardozo, and then decided to make teaching my full-time career.  That’s how I arrived at City Tech!  I’m really happy to be here.

Now I’m back in school, working toward my Ph.D. in History at the CUNY Graduate Center.  That experience has given me a new appreciation, admiration and empathy for our many students who attend school while working.

~ Kerin E. Coughlin