The Samuel & Ronnie Heyman Center on Corporate Governance serves as a hub for research on innovation in business and corporate law. Our renowned faculty have expertise in many areas including technology; antitrust; regulation; securities; corporate compliance and Environmental, Social, and Corporate governance (ESG).
The Center brings together leading scholars, business leaders, practitioners and students to engage in business law scholarship and research. Our students and scholars benefit from access to our New York City location, one of the world’s great commerce, finance and technology centers.
Our students learn to become ethical business lawyers, equipped with the skills they need to lead in corporate practice, as transactional lawyers or litigators.
In addition to rigorous classroom learning, our students gain real-world practical experience through clinics, internships and externships at some of the most prestigious global companies. Students have participated in externships at companies including JP Morgan Chase, Chanel, Morgan Stanley, SONY Music and Viacom. Our students solve complex legal challenges for clients at in-house clinics including the Securities Arbitration Clinic, the Tech Startup Clinic and the Filmmakers Legal Clinic.
The center regularly hosts panel discussions with leading scholars and practitioners addressing the greatest challenges facing the global economy including capital markets, blockchain, corporate innovation and sustainability.
Fabian Eichentopf, Executive Director
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The Heyman Center for Corporate Governance 2023-2024 Annual Report
For almost thirty-five years, the Samuel and Ronnie Heyman Center on Corporate Governance has been the heart and driver of Cardozo’s business and corporate law programming, serving as a hub for research on innovation in the field and bringing together leading scholars, business leaders, practitioners, and students. Learn more about the programming in the annual report.
Getting to Know: Corporate Governance
Learn about the Heyman Center from Executive Director Fabian Eichentopf.
Upcoming Events
The Heyman Center focuses attention on corporate, compliance and securities law issues and on a broad range of other corporate law-related topics by frequently sponsoring and organizing public events and lectures by prominent law and business figures and leading legal scholars.
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ITRANS
The Intensive Transactional Lawyering Program (ITRANS) is part of Cardozo’s practical skills curriculum for students planning to focus on transactional practice. In this 2-week immersion course held in January, students gain essential skills needed for effective client representation in doing deals. Through a deal simulation, students learn contract drafting, client consultation, matter management and negotiation through interactive workshops and guided practice sessions designed to give them opportunities to develop their skills. The course ends with a final deal negotiation. Students are taught by Cardozo full-time and adjunct faculty, along with respected lawyers in transactional practice, who provide feedback throughout the program and critique the final negotiation.
Our Faculty and Senior Fellows
Melanie Leslie
Dean Leslie is coauthor of leading trusts and estates casebooks (both published by Foundation Press). Her scholarship has focused on wills, trusts, and fiduciary duties in the trust, corporate and nonprofit contexts. Before joining the Cardozo faculty, Leslie clerked for Justice Gary S. Stein of the New Jersey Supreme Court and was a litigation associate at McCarter & English. Leslie graduated magna cum laude from Cardozo, where she was executive editor of the Cardozo Law Review.
Courses: Nonprofit Governance, Evidence, Trusts and Estates, Property
Elizabeth Goldman
Charles Yablon
The Heyman Scholars Program
The Heyman Center is the law school’s focal point for students interested in the practice of corporate law and for the study and research of legal issues related to business, finance and economic policy. The center focuses on creating unique opportunities for students interested in business law, organizing exclusive programs aimed at giving students direct contact with prominent lawyers, regulators and business people.
The Heyman Scholars Program is for select J.D. students at Cardozo. The program exposes them to special opportunities to learn about corporate and securities law issues and to interact with professional and academic leaders.
Corporate Compliance Program
In recent years, many large corporations, particularly in the banking and financial services sector, have dramatically expanded their corporate compliance departments. This has created attractive career opportunities for recent law school graduates interested in corporate and business law and regulation. Compliance officers are a corporation’s first line of defense against regulatory problems and allegations of wrongdoing. Compliance officers use their legal, business and counseling expertise to advise corporate executives on how to comply with the very complex regulatory environment in which modern businesses are conducted. They also prevent potential misconduct and enforce the corporations’ own standards of legal and ethical conduct. Compliance work can combine the intellectual challenge of solving complex legal problems, the satisfaction of preventing potential corporate misconduct and the security of working in a large organization with good opportunities for advancement.
To help students take advantage of these emerging opportunities, Cardozo has recently created a specialized concentration in compliance and risk management. This program is designed to teach students the substantive laws, rules and standards applicable to large business corporations, and particularly financial institutions, as well as the internal controls and governance structures by which potentially harmful conduct can be monitored and risks assessed and managed. The concentration provides in-depth instruction in such critical areas as Securities Regulation, Investor Protection, Business Ethics, Fiduciary Duties, Prevention of Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing and other state and federal regulations applicable to financial institutions.
The program also includes, through its sponsorship by Cardozo’s Samuel and Ronnie Heyman Center on Corporate Governance, many special events and opportunities to hear from major business leaders, corporate counsels and government officials in specific areas of compliance. In recent years, the Heyman Center has sponsored many programs designed to be of interest to those working or planning to work in the compliance field.
Another important part of the program is the unique opportunities for internships and externships. Cardozo has partnered with major financial institutions and regulatory agencies in a variety of on-site programs designed to give our students hands-on experience and practical insights into the nature of compliance work. These partners include JP Morgan Chase; The Securities and Exchange Commission; The Commodity, Futures Trading Commission; the Financial Industry Regulatory; New York Department of Financial Services; and New York Office of Attorney General Authority.
Our aim is to help our students prepare for work in a corporate environment equipped not only with the substantive sophisticated knowledge on compliance but also with a set of meaningful connections, relationships and mentorships with alumni in corporate organizations, who are eager to support the growth and success of our students.