An Interview with Mara Harvey, School Law

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Hello and welcome to Legally Bond, a podcast presented by the law firm Bond, chenek and King.
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I'm your host, kim Wolf-Price.
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Today we're talking with Mara Harvey, a senior counsel practicing out of Bond's Melville Long Island office.
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Mara is part of our school law practice group, which is within the firm's labor department.
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Hello, mara, thank you for joining us on the podcast today.
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Hello, good morning, it's nice to see you.
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Well, mara, you are part of a group of attorneys who joined the firm at the beginning of this year after practicing at another firm.
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Is that correct?
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That is Very scary, but has been great.
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I can't believe it, all right.
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So today I'd like to talk about your school law practice on Long Island, the transition to bond, and I was thinking maybe we should start by telling the listeners our mutual interesting facts to let them know, if it seems like, wow, they get along really well for people who met a couple months ago, that we've actually known each other for a little while, haven't we?
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We have, and do you want to tell the listeners how we met?
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So just under about 25 years ago, I stepped into a small group class in Syracuse University and you were one of the first people that I met in that class.
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Currently, there's actually three people from that group of 10 to 15 that are now working at Bonds.
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It's kind of crazy.
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And isn't it, honestly?
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We had a great cohort.
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I mean, there were at least, you know, two other mega cum laude's, a summa, some cum laude's, and three of us now working together at bond.
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That's kind of crazy, all because of Syracuse law.
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I know I love it All right.
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Well, so back to our regularly scheduled show, I guess here.
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So school law practicing on Long Island and maybe some talk about municipal work.
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Do those topics work for you today?
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It does All right, great, thank you.
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Before we get too far into legal issues, I have a tradition, sort of on the podcast, where we start our conversation out by talking about our guests' backgrounds.
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So I think we know where you went to law school.
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Now, but would you mind telling us a little bit about you, whether it's undergrad, where you grew up, family hobbies, whatever you'd like to talk about Yep.
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For undergrad I went to Binghamton University.
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I have a little bit of a different background than many that go to law school.
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I did get my bachelor's in science and accounting.
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As you probably could tell from my accent, I grew up in Long Island.
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My husband is a police officer in the NYPD counterterrorism canine unit and I have two very active boys, charlie and Travis.
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Our house tends to be pretty busy because between Charlie Travis, our COVID pup Danny, and my husband's other partner, canine Robbie, we have a full house.
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If you asked me this question 10 years ago, I probably would have said that my hobby was hands down animal rescue.
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I used to volunteer at animal shelters.
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Now my hobbies are being an Uber driver for my kids and cheering Charlie on for baseball and Travis for lacrosse.
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But I wouldn't change a thing.
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Yeah, well, and you do have the pups at home, one being, you know, a canine officer and the other one is a rescue.
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Yes, so of course that's great, I know.
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I do remember visiting your apartment on Long Island, I think or hearing stories about like you had many fosters going.
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Yes, fosters came in and out of my apartment.
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The apartment building probably was not thrilled about it, but I have to say my neighbors all loved it because they got to cuddle with puppies and kittens.
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Yes, exactly, it's awesome.
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I think that's good training for your Uber driver cheer role that you have now.
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Yes, all right.
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So, as I mentioned when we started, you didn't start your practice at Bond, so can you tell us a little bit about your career before Bond?
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Yeah, I started as a summer associate with Lamb Barnowski, which is a small, medium-sized firm on Long Island, when I graduated from Syracuse.
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Although my first choice was not necessarily going back to Long Island, I did end up returning back to Long Island, back to Lamb Barnowski, where I started there as a full-time associate and ended just over 20 years later as a partner when I came to Bond.
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That's wild.
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I mean, we haven't aged so it's hard for me to believe it was 20 years ago, so when did?
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you join us at Bond.
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January 1st was my first day.
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That's wild.
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All right.
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And so when you were in law school, I said you practice a lot of school law work with school districts.
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Did you think that's what you might?
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be doing, not ever.
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I actually didn't even know that school law even existed.
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The ironic part is Syracuse actually started a kind of combo program with the School of Education the year after we graduated.
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At the time there was no classes or anything like that.
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I went into law school thinking I wanted to do copyright and trademark.
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While in school I realized that it wasn't for me and I concentrated on a lot of tax and estate planning classes.
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Yeah, I mean Rob Nassau had that effect on people, though that's the professor who teaches tax classes right, yes, and he definitely was influential.
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I think he's probably the only professor who could have a 200-person estate and gift tax class when it was maybe one thing on the bar exam.
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I agree with you to this day.
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I think that's true.
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So I'm going to send him this and get all of his Rob Nassau shout outs, because he's still teaching and you should register for his class if you're a student at Syracuse Law.
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Yes, it is definitely one of the more exciting ones.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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All right.
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So what drew you to this work to school law with Gene Barnowski and was exposed to it?
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Like I said, I really didn't know it even existed.
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They assigned me when I came back full-time to corporate and estate planning.
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Because of my background I actually asked if they could switch me in another one of the associates that was assigned to the education law and they did so.
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The first half of my career at Landman-Barnowski I was doing both estate planning and school law and gradually, as the years went on, the need became more in the school law practice so I really focused on the school law side.
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That's great, all right.
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So I guess I should back up a little bit.
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We're talking about education law, school law, but maybe for the listeners, what does it mean to be part of the school law?
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practice group.
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So I think the best way to describe what a school lawyer is is that I'm a general practitioner with a specialized client.
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So in school law there's contract, real estate, estate issues, labor, environmental.
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So you're working with a specialized client with various different things, and so we say schools, what types of districts, what types of clients generally are you advising and working with?
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Yeah, so I mean I generally work with more of the public schools.
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You know some of the people in the school area specialize in private schools or charter schools.
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You know I do do some of the things in those areas but the primary portion of my practice is the public schools.
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You know I also do a lot of the same skills with libraries and other municipalities, but you know I'd say 90 percent of my work is dealing with public.
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You know K to 12, k to 8, k to 6 schools.
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That makes sense.
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And it does make sense that libraries or municipalities would be the same, because it's that same sort of general practitioner vibe with a specialized client where contracts and real estate, estate issues labor.
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I bet that all still comes up for them as well right?
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Yeah, no, it does.
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And some of you with libraries, depending on what kind of library you are, the laws are actually found in the education law.
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So yeah, all right, that's interesting Cool.
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All right, so it seems like it's everything from labor issues to student discipline and everything in between.
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Is that true?
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It really is.
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I always explain when you know my cocktail way of explaining what I do is I tend to deal with the student issues.
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So I deal more so with student discipline, residency contract, special ed.
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You know, things go on in the school during the day.
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How do I handle it?
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I tend to be the person that you're calling.
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Doesn't mean I can't negotiate a contract or anything like that, but really my day-to-day is, you know, really student issues.
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Right.
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So I imagine there are certain times of the year your phone lights up more often.
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Yes, so usually we say the first sunny day in the spring, my days are going crazy because the kids in school are, you know, kind of feeling their oats and, you know, maybe not behaving the way that they should.
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End of year, senior pranks, things like that Things get a little crazy.
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There's definitely had situations where I feel really bad because senior made a really poor decision and, you know, had bigger effects than he or she thought it would.
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So it's not always fun, but it does get there and it's to keep them safe right.
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That's the whole purpose of all of this.
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I imagine there's also things like purchasing buses or equipment or selling or building new buildings, right, yeah, these are all things that we do handle but, to be honest, that is one of the things that I am extremely proud and happy to be at Bond with.
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But, to be honest, that is one of the things that I am extremely proud and happy to be at Bond with because there really are other attorneys that we collaborate with who have a lot more experience in those areas, to assist and guide and making sure that I'm dealing and catching and dealing with everything the best way for the client.
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That's great.
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That is sort of the nice thing about being in a full service corporate firm is that there's all those people you can collaborate with and parse off pieces with the same level of client engagement.
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Yeah, and it would have.
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Something was similar with Lamb and Bronowski.
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We did have other people, but it wasn't the depth that we do have at Brand.
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Yeah, absolutely so.
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I'm always fascinated by this and it's May and so it's that time of year but you're also involved in counseling school district clients related to the school board and school budget vote right.
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Yes, when I was at my previous firm, I actually was in charge of all the elections, of all the districts.
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So, although I didn't do it alone, because I haven't figured out how to cut myself into lots of pieces that Hermione thing from Harry Potter yes, but I was the one that was reviewing all the notices, making sure you know issues, making sure everything was done in English and Spanish.
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Everything was done appropriately.
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So you know, I've continued working with all the districts, you know, at bond with the elections, and Tuesday is going to be a very busy day for me and, as I tell my family, don't expect to see me at all on May 21st.
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As I tell my family don't expect to see me at all on May 21st.
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Guess it's time to get those school budget votes together.
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Yes, are your clients primarily?
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on Long Island they are.
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Since coming to Bond, I have worked with some of our other clients that are upstate or outside of Long Island and I do actually genuinely love doing that and I hope that that will grow.
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As you know, my time here increases.
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I think that it really is a great thing for me, and even just the clients that I have, you know, kind of came with and worked, have been working with for a while, to see the differences and the similarities between things that are happening upstate and downstate, and it's really amazing to see how it's the same law but just different ways of doing it.
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And I always say often there's not only one way to do things and just because you've done something one way doesn't mean it's the only way you have to do it.
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And I feel like on Long Island especially, schools like to do things the same way they've done it and sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn't.
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Sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn't, yeah.
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So this gives you a little bit more knowledge on how things can be done, maybe a little bit differently to help the client.
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So can you talk a little bit about Long Island?
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For listeners we keep saying it and you know, we know about Long Island but maybe other people don't.
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So can you talk a little bit?
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I imagine people think, oh, that's New York City Metro.
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These are only giant suburban school districts.
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So can you talk a little bit about the area and the districts that make up Nassau and Suffolk counties?
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So Nassau and Suffolk counties are outside Long Island.
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It's not.
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When you think of New York City you think of skyscrapers and things like that.
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Long Island very few exceptions.
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You're probably not talking about more than two story highs Definitely more like upstate, except the houses are a lot closer.
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You know school districts really range the gamut.
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You know we go from one school district that we represent has zero students.
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They have a superintendent and they have people that work for the district, but they contract out with all neighboring districts in order for the education.
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That's actually a really new thing.
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There used to be about eight students in the school.
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Then they decided that having a school for eight students was not economical.
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So that was a change, you know.
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Then you go to some districts that have 8,000 students, where upstate there's probably some towns that don't have 8,000 residents For sure.
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You have some school districts that go from K to 6, some that go to K to 8, some that have two high schools, some that have two middle schools, some the same kids kind of move up and are together, and some that there's two, three, four, 500 kids in each grade.
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So it is really different.
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Long Island is an area also that ranges the gamut with regard to economics.
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You have some very high wealth area, some very poor areas and everything in between.
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But it is the place where the Great Gatsby was written about.
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So there's that.
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And then there's there's farms, even too right.
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There's wineries, there's farms wineries and farms.
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Yeah, it's very unique and with a lot of interesting different aspects to it.
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So you're an active member of a lot of groups, including the education law committees of the Suffolk County Bar Association and that's the easternmost county on the island and the New York State School Attorneys Association.
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You've chaired the Suffolk County Bar Committee and I know you've spoken at are going to speak again at NYSESA and this is extra work for you.
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So why is being engaged with these organizations important?
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I think it's important to be involved.
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I think that's something I've kind of done since I've been in high school.
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I was kind of always involved.
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I think it is a great way to make me a better lawyer.
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Also, it's a great way to get new clients.
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It's meeting people and you never know who you're going to meet.
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Clients want to know that you're involved too.
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They want to know that you're kept up in the date with things, you're going to conferences and that you have the respect of your colleagues.
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No superintendent wants to say oh, you know, I just spoke with our attorney, mara Harvey, and they say oh, you know, she's a horrible person, or you know, like no one likes her Right or I've never heard of her Right.
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That's fair.
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So do you think you learn a lot from your colleagues?
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Then I do.
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Especially in the area of school law.
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There's so many situations that there's really no case on point Something happened, it never happened before, or it happened and it never went up to the commissioner or never went up to the court.
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So school law really is about what you've experienced.
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Now, although I still feel like I'm 25 and I have, you know, no experience, I only have the experiences I had.
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And you know, when you're dealing with any relationships with other attorneys, you know you're able to speak with them.
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You know Bond is great as we have a practice group of people we could go to, but even there it's limited to our experiences.
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I find you know, when you have people that work in different places, they come at situations differently and you're able to work about it.
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When COVID happened, the school elections were taking place and we kind of put together like a quasi committee with attorneys from different law firms to try to really just talk about and kind of try to all tackle and figure out what was going on with all of the new things that were coming out and how to handle it.
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You know, because, just like when you have any new law, whether it's a regulation or you know, whatever it is, you don't really know how it's going to be determined.
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So we wanted to try to be consistent and kind of come up with you know, this is how we think this was supposed to be.
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Right, that was nonstop and changing every few minutes.
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So that's obviously a great benefit of knowing other people in the industry.
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Knowing other practitioners is also focusing on these issues and speaking and collaborating.
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It seems like it's just an important part of your practice then it is.
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It puts me in front of people who and these people could be the next prospective client, whether they're a lawyer, whether they're a school board member, whether they're an administrator, whether they're a business person School boards are made up of all sorts of people.
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When a person's looking, you know, thinking, oh, you know what, maybe we're not happy with our law firm and we want to look at other.
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I want to know that they've seen me speak and say, oh wow, she did a great job.
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Maybe I'm going to reach out to her and see if her firm is interested.
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Yeah, that's fantastic.
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I mean, it's really about relationships.
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That's what you're talking about Relationships with clients, relationships with other practitioners.
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It's obvious that's really important to successfully advise our clients, but building relationships in our profession with other attorneys is important also for our clients.
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So is that part of why you're so active outside of your regular practice.
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Yeah, other attorneys, when you have interactions with them, they figure out the type of person you are.
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I would like to think that people see that I am a fair person, I'm reasonable, I'm a straight shooter, so that when I'm dealing with them on the other side, when they're representing a family against a school district, that we could have a conversation and come up with a solution that is best for all.
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And it's those relationships that really help that I know.
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I recently had an advocate email me and ask if I had a particular school district and you know if I represented a particular school district and I said no, I'm sorry, I really don't.
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And he said well, your favorite advocate wishes you did, because I know it actually come to a successful solution to it.
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So it's really those relationships that helped me be a better advocate for my client as well, yeah that makes so.
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that makes so much sense.
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That's a great story.
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Well, we saw each other last year at NYSASA and we'll do it again in a couple of weeks.
00:18:06.442 --> 00:18:17.467
That's the New York State School Attorneys Association meeting, but it really seemed like you knew everyone, mara everyone, I guess, although I said I think I'm still 25, but I'm really not.
00:18:17.707 --> 00:18:19.328
And you know it was one of those things.
00:18:19.328 --> 00:18:53.054
I always was the one to reach out to the owners of the firm and say, hey, I really want to go, and when I'm at a conference, whether my family's there or not, I'm interacting or networking, and that was something that was always important to me and I always put that in the forefront from, I guess, a young part of my career and in a lot of it I was put in a position in Lama and Pernowski that I was given the opportunity to have that happen and some people took it and ran with it and some people didn't To me.
00:18:53.054 --> 00:18:56.028
I know I have to put myself out there.
00:18:56.028 --> 00:18:57.854
It's not easy for me to do.
00:18:57.854 --> 00:19:11.307
I'm actually more of an introverted person than an extroverted person, to most people's surprise, but I forced myself to do it because I know it will make me a better person in the long run.
00:19:11.907 --> 00:19:13.672
Yeah, and for me that seems natural.
00:19:13.672 --> 00:19:20.169
You've always been doing that since I met you, right Like we were talking about ways to make the law school better, where students thinks we could do so.
00:19:20.169 --> 00:19:24.663
It's just part of a skill that you've been developing throughout your legal career.
00:19:24.663 --> 00:19:32.990
Well, any advice for a law student who might not now know what school law is or has, since this podcast, learned a little bit, any advice?
00:19:33.030 --> 00:19:33.291
for them.
00:19:33.291 --> 00:19:34.922
Go to board meetings.
00:19:34.922 --> 00:19:37.268
Board meetings are open to the public.
00:19:37.268 --> 00:19:39.353
Go see what board meetings are.
00:19:39.353 --> 00:19:50.530
It doesn't have to be just the board of where you go to school or where you live, because sometimes look in the papers, see what school districts are having kind of some controversy.
00:19:50.530 --> 00:19:55.722
Go to that board meeting because those will probably be a lot more interesting than the ones where everything is going great.
00:19:56.666 --> 00:19:58.232
Look online at the agenda.
00:19:58.232 --> 00:20:02.505
Look at what types of things school districts handle, especially now.
00:20:02.505 --> 00:20:05.873
All school district has their budget on their website.
00:20:05.873 --> 00:20:06.882
Look at that.
00:20:06.882 --> 00:20:08.205
Call someone who does it.
00:20:08.205 --> 00:20:22.522
Ask if they could just sit down with you, whether it's the day for the hour, and talk about what your day-to-day life is, or what is your normal day day-to-day life is, or what is your normal day.
00:20:22.522 --> 00:20:23.846
Spoiler alert in school district no two days are the same.
00:20:23.846 --> 00:20:37.471
You come into work thinking I'm going to do A, b and C and you do X, y and Z, but then A, b and C still has to be done, just to figure out when you're doing A, b and C, which it's usually after three o'clock when the schools are closed.
00:20:43.819 --> 00:20:44.301
That makes perfect sense.
00:20:44.301 --> 00:20:44.805
Well, thank you so much.
00:20:44.805 --> 00:20:45.226
Thanks for that, mara.
00:20:45.226 --> 00:20:52.150
I'm so happy that you joined Bond and we get to work together, and I'm looking forward to working on projects together, seeing you at NYSASA and having you back on the podcast.
00:20:52.190 --> 00:20:52.811
Thank you again.
00:20:52.811 --> 00:20:54.184
Thank you so much.
00:20:59.280 --> 00:21:01.451
Thank you for tuning into this episode of Leg bond.
00:21:01.451 --> 00:21:09.507
If you're listening and have any questions for me, want to hear from someone at the firm or have a suggestion for a future topic, please email us at legally bonded bskcom.
00:21:09.507 --> 00:21:14.421
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Until our next talk, be well contents.
00:21:17.242 --> 00:21:22.205
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