Member Feature
Our member feature is an opportunity to spotlight our members' hard work and talent while also getting to know a little bit about them and their various interests.
Charis G. Orzechowski
The Long Haul to the Legal Profession
Of all the things you might expect to hear from the Treasurer/Secretary of one of the New York City Bar Association’s committees, one of the last might be, “The first tractor-trailer I drove was a 13-speed Freightliner Classic.” Granted, it is the Transportation Law Committee, but even so, Charis G. Orzechowski hardly fits the mold.
Charis’s road, as it were, to the City Bar was not without detours. After hauling “everything from computer parts to mozzarella cheese,” and delivering dry goods from a distribution warehouse to Tri-State-area Stop & Shops, she quit driving and went into training to take the police exam. One day at the gym she was approached by a retired police officer and current community college professor of Criminal Justice who told her if he could do it all over again he’d go back to school and study Political Science and minor in Chinese. So Charis enrolled at SUNY New Paltz and majored in Political Science with a minor in Asian studies and Chinese.
While taking classes and working as a teaching assistant to the president at SUNY, Charis decided to pursue a career in the law, but after taking the LSAT twice her score wasn’t sufficient. In the depths of her discouragement, her boss told her, “Take it a third time. You’ll get the score you need this time.”
Charis took the exam, got her score, and started law school, where she met the next character on her journey, City Bar President Sam Seymour, who was there describing to students the benefits of bar association membership. “I had been dead set against getting involved in activities that would distract me from school,” Charis says, “but as soon as I heard Mr. Seymour and the activities that the City Bar offered, I realized this might be a good place to be. What Mr. Seymour conveyed was not only a great opportunity to network and make connections, but the opportunity to be a living part of the policy in New York City.”
It was good timing for Charis to become a student-member of the Transportation Committee, which was being reconstituted and was looking for new members. Her working knowledge of road and infrastructure conditions, traffic problems, commercial vehicle issues, freight logistics and DOT compliance were heartily welcomed by the other members, who were examining issues such as a proposed increase to the allowed weight of tractor trailers. Charis credits her work on the Commmittee with helping her land an internship this summer in the Port Authority’s legal department.
Charis has come a long way on her professional journey since she started out as a trucker, which included a year and a half going cross country in a sleeper cab with a 53-foot trailer, when her favorite truck stop was the “Petro” on I-95 in South Carolina (“best buffet on the East Coast”), although she says, “You can’t beat the tiny little side of the road pull-offs in Texas where you can get burritos made with pulled chicken and real home-made green chili!”
Having received plenty of guidance along the way from others, Charis is already passing along her own wisdom about her new profession based on her past experience: “Just like planning where the front tires need to go so that your back tires can be properly maneuvered, planning several steps ahead is the key to charting your best legal argument.”
Erin Meyer
Erin Meyer, a third-year student at Columbia Law School, and an active member of the New York City Bar Association, is thrilled to be a student member of the City Bar’s Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Rights Committee. During her first year on the Committee, Erin worked with attorneys on the Gender Identity & Gender Expression Subcommittee to plan and host a pro bono Continuing Legal Education program for legal service providers with transgender and gender non-conforming clients. The program offered cultural competency training and practical tips in a variety of areas affecting low-income transgender clients, such as immigration, employment discrimination, and family law. This year, she has continued to work with the Subcommittee to advocate for increased access to healthcare and state Medicaid insurance coverage for transgender individuals. “Serving on this Committee has been an amazing opportunity to collaborate with and learn from so many talented, inspiring, and experienced lawyers who are highly motivated to advance social justice,” Meyer said.
At Columbia, Meyer is participating in the Accelerated Interdisciplinary Legal Education Program, a six-year dual-degree program in which she will receive a B.A. in Women’s & Gender Studies from Columbia College and a J.D. from the law school. She has focused her legal studies on Sexuality & Gender Law, participating in the Columbia Journal of Gender and Law and the Sexuality & Gender Law Clinic. In the Clinic, she collaborated with fellow students on a variety of advocacy projects aimed at protecting the rights of sex workers, enhancing law enforcement responsiveness to domestic violence, and obtaining asylum for a young man who was persecuted in his home country due to his sexual orientation.
During the summer after her first year of law school, Meyer worked as a legal intern at the Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund (TLDEF). While at TLDEF, she researched state laws regarding name and gender change procedures and conducted interviews with clients who faced discrimination based on their gender identity in areas such as employment and the prison system. After her second year of law school, she became a summer associate at Hogan Lovells, where her pro bono work included assisting a victim of domestic violence in petitioning for an order of protection, and researching Haitian laws as part of a larger project aimed at obtaining humanitarian parole for Haitian women who had been sexually assaulted in the aftermath of the January 2010 earthquake.
Meyer is grateful to the City Bar for enabling her to participate on the LGBT Rights Committee, and she strongly encourages other law students to become members of the City Bar and to join a committee. “The chance to work with accomplished lawyers from a variety of different legal practice areas and backgrounds on a cause you are passionate about is an opportunity not to be missed!” she says.
Farah Zaman: One in a Thousand
When law student Farah Zaman joined the New York City Bar Association last month, she helped the Association pass an important milestone: Zaman is our 1,000th law-student member.
A second-year student at Brooklyn Law School with a background in international human rights and a growing interest in intellectual property and tech startups, Zaman is excited about becoming an active member of the City Bar. “Law school offers great events and opportunities, but I want to get involved in activities outside of law school as well,” said Zaman.
As an undergraduate at Carnegie Mellon, Zaman majored in Decision Science and International Relations. While studying abroad in Geneva, Switzerland, she conducted an independent research project on the priorities and funding mechanisms active in Darfur, Sudan. Zaman then worked for “Team Darfur” a related advocacy group in Washington D.C. Since beginning her law studies, Zaman has competed on her school’s Moot Court Honor Society, and served last summer as an extern for Justice Richard B. Lowe III of the New York Supreme Court Commercial Division. During her internship, a number of lawyers encouraged her to join the New York City Bar as a way to get involved in the profession, even while in law school. “The breadth of the committees at the City Bar is amazing, and I look forward to getting more involved in the Association’s many activities,” Zaman says.
Zaman recently visited the House of the Association for coffee with City Bar President Samuel W. Seymour. Seymour, who has made outreach to law students and young lawyers a priority of his presidency, noted that “the future clearly looks bright for Farah Zaman, and therefore for the Association and the profession. We are very pleased to welcome Farah as our 1,000th law student member.”
