Dean Leslie Announces Michelle Greenberg-Kobrin as
Director of the Indie Film Clinic
May 4, 2016, New York, NY— Dean Melanie Leslie has announced that Michelle Greenberg-Kobrin will become the Director of the Indie Film Clinic and an Assistant Clinical Professor of Law at Cardozo School of Law. Ms. Greenberg-Kobrin has served as the Dean of Students at Columbia Law School since 2005, where she also taught courses in deals, negotiation and leadership. Prior to her years at Columbia Law School, Ms. Greenberg-Kobrin worked as an associate at the New York office of Arnold & Porter, where her practice focused on international corporate and securities matters, mergers and acquisitions, sovereign debt issuances and financial institutions. Ms. Greenberg-Kobrin will also serve as Senior Fellow and Director of the Leadership Program at the Heyman Center for Corporate Governance.
“Michelle’s outstanding combination of experience as both a legal educator and a top-level transactional attorney at a leading firm make her perfectly suited to train our students to represent clients in creative fields,” said Dean Leslie. “Cardozo’s FAME Center for fashion, arts, media and entertainment law is designed to produce lawyers who can be leaders in these industries, and the Indie Film Clinic is an integral part of that program.”
The Indie Film Clinic was established in 2011 to provide free legal services to filmmakers in New York City. To date Cardozo students in the clinic have represented over 90 independent, documentary and student films, many of which have gone on to appear in leading U.S. and international film festivals including Cannes, Sundance, South X Southwest, the Tribeca Film Festival, the Los Angeles Film Festival, Hot Docs, and DOC NYC. The clinic is part of Cardozo’s Intellectual Property and Information Law Program, one of the highest ranked I.P. programs in the country.
Michelle Greenberg-Kobrin received her JD from Columbia School of Law in 1999. In her role as Dean of Students at Columbia Law School she oversaw the Office of Student Affairs, which is responsible for student life and events, academic counseling, judicial clerkships and outreach, diversity and inclusion programming, peer and faculty mentoring, leadership development, and student journals and organizations among other responsibilities. While at Columbia Ms. Greenberg-Kobrin developed and co-taught Leadership for Lawyers, an innovative course which uses case studies and live client work in the non-profit, corporate and governmental sectors to train students to become wise counselors. She taught the skills-based Deals Workshop, which introduced students to a wide variety of deal-making techniques. In addition, she taught Negotiations, a simulation course introducing students to the theory and practice of negotiation and dispute resolution.
Prior to working at Columbia Law School, Ms. Greenberg-Kobrin was an associate at the New York office of Arnold & Porter LLP, where her practice included representing private and public companies in the technology, biotechnology and manufacturing areas in securities offerings, corporate matters and merger and acquisitions, representing sovereign entities, financial institutions and private equity funds as well as functioning as outside counsel for companies and not-for-profit organizations.
Cardozo’s Indie Film Clinic is part of a robust offering of clinics and experiential learning opportunities at the law school. Indie Film Clinic students represent independent, documentary and student filmmakers, particularly those from traditionally underrepresented backgrounds. They provide clients with the legal assistance necessary for commercial and artistic success, including the drafting and negotiation of entity formation documents; talent, crew and producer agreements; depiction releases; music, film clip, and artwork licenses; legal opinion letters on fair use; and First Amendment issues.
For more information contact:
John DeNatale
Assistant Dean of Communications
Denatale@yu.edu.
