Getnick & Getnick lawyers are active in the legal, public interest, academic, government, and business communities. Our partners and counsel include the Chairman of Taxpayers Against Fraud Education Fund, the national whistleblower advocacy organization, a past President of the New York State Bar Association, a Board Member and Chair of the Judiciary Committee of the New York County Lawyers’ Association, a member of the New York State Bar Association Executive Committee and House of Delegates, and an adjunct professor at Cornell Law School. The Cornell Whistleblower Law Program, the first such program in the country, was founded and coordinated by our managing partner, Neil V. Getnick.
We are educators, often speaking at bar association and other legal educational seminars on whistleblower laws and business integrity issues, both in the US and internationally. Visit Getnick Now to view our upcoming speaking engagements.
We are committed to serving the community in the US and abroad. Our Monitoring Practice in Africa is a pro bono project designed to ensure that donor funds reach their intended recipients, and aspires to be a model for organizations that seek to enhance and guarantee transparency and integrity in delivering international as well as domestic aid. The Ujima Subukia Fund, a charitable organization operating a scholarship program for secondary students in Kenya, grew out of Mr. Getnick’s leadership of an international campaign to free and support his former Cornell classmate Koigi wa Wamwere, Kenya’s most renowned democratic and human rights activist. Since Mr. Wamwere won his freedom in 1997, Mr. Getnick and he have together fought for human rights and against corruption.
Managing Partner Neil V. Getnick has been a member of the Executive Committee of the New York State Bar Association Commercial and Federal Litigation Section since the creation of the Section in 1989. He has chaired the Section’s Civil Prosecution Committee since its creation in 1991. He serves as the Chairman of the Board of Taxpayers Against Fraud, a Washington, D.C. based non-partisan public interest organization supporting the Federal and state False Claims Acts and other whistleblower laws. He served on the Advisory Board of RISE, a comprehensive internal integrity remedial effort initiated by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, from its inception in 2000 to the completion of its work. He has served as a faculty member of the National Institute of Trial Advocacy since 1991. He is the Chairman and President of the International Association of Independent Private Sector Inspectors General (IAIPSIG); the IPSIG mechanism became the principal monitoring means employed by New York City in its citywide anti-corruption programs. He was appointed an adjunct professor at Cornell Law School in the spring semester of 2013 and, together with law school dean Stewart Schwab, co-launched a course on “Whistleblower Law: Involving Private Citizens in Public Law Enforcement,” the first of its kind in the country, under the auspices of the law school’s Business Law Institute.
Partner Judge Margaret Finerty is a member of the Audit Committee of the New York State Bar Association (NYSBA) and served as elected Member-At-Large of the Executive Committee from June 2010 – May 2014. She was Chair of the Working Group of the NYSBA Executive Committee that authored the NYSBA published report entitled “Report of the Executive Committee on the Impact of Recent Budget Cuts in New York State Court Funding” in January of 2012. She has been a member of the NYSBA House of Delegates for most years from 1995 to the present and a member of the Commercial and Federal Litigation Section from 2010 to the present. She has been a member of the Board of Directors of the New York County Lawyers’ Association (NYCLA) for most years since 1995 and Chair of the Judiciary Committee from 1993 to the present. Since 2007, she has been Co-Chair of the Task Force on Judicial Selection. She had been a voting member of the New York City Bar Association (ABCNY) Judiciary Committee from 1998 to the present. From 2001 to 2008, she was a member, of the Committee on Minorities in the Courts. She had been a member of the American Bar Association (ABA) since 1979 and from 2013-14 was Liaison to the ABA’s Task Force on Corporate Monitors Standards. From 2013 to the present, she has been Commissioner of the Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Commission. In February 2014 she was appointed to the Independent Judicial Election Qualification Commission for the First Judicial District in New York State as a Designee of the New York County Lawyers’ Association.
Partner Lesley Ann Skillen is a past Co-Chair of the Conference Committee of Taxpayers Against Fraud and the American Bar Association Qui Tam Subcommittee, and the US-based Partner Investigator in a research project promoting the introduction of US-style whistleblower laws in Australia. The project was conducted under the auspices of the Humanities and Social Sciences Delegated Ethics Research Committee of the Australian National University and was funded by an Australian Research Council Discovery Project grant. Ms. Skillen is a member of the American Bar Association, the New York City Bar Association and Taxpayers Against Fraud Education Fund.
Partner Richard Dircks is Co-Chair of the Commercial and Federal Litigation Section Committee on Civil Prosecution of the New York State Bar Association and a member of the Commercial and Federal Litigation Section Executive Committee. He is a member of the American Bar Association, New York State Bar Association and the New York City Bar Association.
Of Counsel Stuart Altschuler currently serves on the New York City Bar Association’s Committee on Professional Responsibility. He is a member of the American, New York State, and New York City Bar Associations.
Of Counsel Michael Getnick is a past President of the New York State Bar Association, a past President of Oneida County Bar Association and a member of the New York State Bar Association Executive Committee and House of Delegates. He has been awarded the President’s Pro Bono Service Award for the Fifth Judicial District for the State of New York and has been a panel participant for the New York State Bar Association in CLE programs on Ethics and Professionalism. He has served as a Liaison Representative of the Executive Committee of the New York State Bar Association with the Committee on the Unauthorized Practice of Law. Mr. Getnick is a past President of the Legal Aid Society of Mid-New York, where he currently sits on the Board of Directors.