Marcia Levy

Professor Levy has more than 25 years of experience working with students and practicing lawyers in both the public and private sectors, providing training in trial advocacy, communication, and leadership skills. Levy’s distinguished legal career includes experience as a professor, law clinic director, public interest program director, pro bono and professional development administrator and practicing attorney.

Prior to returning to academia in 2020, Ms. Levy served as Executive Director of two separate non-profit legal services programs, Volunteers of Legal Service (VOLS) and Pro Bono Partnership.  From 2007 to 2011, she was Special Counsel for Pro Bono and Director of Professional Development at Sullivan & Cromwell LLP. Prior to that, Levy spent 14 years in legal education in various roles from clinical law professor and law clinic director and director of experiential education and externships to Dean of Career Services. Levy served as an assistant federal defender in the Eastern District of New York, and a staff attorney with the Legal Aid Society Prisoners’ Rights Project. 

Levy was Counsel and then Special Advisor to Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman’s Task Force on Access to Civil Legal Services, which became the Permanent Commission on Access to Justice. In 2020, she was appointed by NY’s then Chief Judge DiFiore to be a member of the Covid-19 Task Force. She has served on several committees, including the NYC Bar Committees on Pro Bono and Public Service, Military Affairs and Corrections and Reentry, and served as the Chair of the AALS Committee on Pro Bono and Public Service. She was a member of NALP’s Pro Bono and Professional Development Task Force.  She has presented at numerous conferences on issues relating to pro bono and legal education and been the keynote at public service events at Stanford and Albany Law Schools.

Professor Levy has developed, directed, and taught in advocacy training programs, working domestically with law schools and organizations such as the National Institute for Trial Advocacy (NITA). Internationally, she has worked as a Fulbright Specialist training Ukrainian law students and lawyers, and with ABA-Roli, Pilnet, CEELI Institute and others in Egypt, Jordan, Russia, China and many countries in Central and Eastern Europe providing advocacy and teacher training.  She participated in the Support Center Interim Executive Director training in 2021. In 2007, she was awarded the Robert E. Oliphant Service to NITA Award and for several years was a NYSBA Empire Awardee for Pro Bono Service.  In 2015, the New York Law Journal named her a Lawyer who Leads by Example for Public Service.

Professor Levy is proud to have co-founded and is a Board Member of Veterans Legal Justice (VLJ) a nonprofit providing pro bono legal services to veterans, service members and their families in New Hampshire.  She recently joined the board of Speedwell in Portland, Maine.  She is the proud mother of a son who is a U.S. Marine Corps Captain in Force Recon, who is also a rising 2L law student.