The Legal Aid Society of Northeastern New York (LASNNY) announced the selection of Attorney Nic Rangel as LASNNY’s next Executive Director. Rangel will succeed Lillian Moy, who served as LASNNY’s Executive Director for the past 27 years.
“Nic is the person we need to take LASNNY into our next century,” James E. Hacker, LASNNY Board Chair said in a recent news release from the company. “We have grown in size and capacity to serve our low-income clients, and with Nic at the helm we are confident in our future.”
Rangel is leaving her position as the Second Deputy Counsel to the New York State Senate Majority, Office of Counsel and Program. There she was on the Conference Ethics Counsel, and she oversees a team of staff and multiple legislative committees. Nic is a Regional Deputy for the Hispanic National Bar Association, leads the Capital Region National Lawyers Guild Chapter, and is a member of other local Bars. She currently sits on the Advisory Board for the Government Law Center at Albany Law School, the Advisory Board for Rockefeller College of Public Affairs & Policy at the University of Albany, and the Board of Directors for the University at Albany Alumni Association. Nic is a volunteer with the Legal Aid Society of Northeastern New York (LASNNY) Private Attorney Involvement (PAI) program and serves on the New York State Attorney Admissions Committee on Character and Fitness for the Third Judicial District Appellate Division. She has experience as an organizational leader, a nonprofit manager, a fundraiser, public speaker, and student advocate.
The Legal Aid Society of Northeastern New York (LASNNY) announced the selection of Attorney Nic Rangel as LASNNY’s next Executive Director. Rangel will succeed Lillian Moy, who served as LASNNY’s Executive Director for the past 27 years.
“Nic is the person we need to take LASNNY into our next century,” James E. Hacker, LASNNY Board Chair said in a recent news release from the company. “We have grown in size and capacity to serve our low-income clients, and with Nic at the helm we are confident in our future.”
Rangel is leaving her position as the Second Deputy Counsel to the New York State Senate Majority, Office of Counsel and Program. There she was on the Conference Ethics Counsel, and she oversees a team of staff and multiple legislative committees. Nic is a Regional Deputy for the Hispanic National Bar Association, leads the Capital Region National Lawyers Guild Chapter, and is a member of other local Bars. She currently sits on the Advisory Board for the Government Law Center at Albany Law School, the Advisory Board for Rockefeller College of Public Affairs & Policy at the University of Albany, and the Board of Directors for the University at Albany Alumni Association. Nic is a volunteer with the Legal Aid Society of Northeastern New York (LASNNY) Private Attorney Involvement (PAI) program and serves on the New York State Attorney Admissions Committee on Character and Fitness for the Third Judicial District Appellate Division. She has experience as an organizational leader, a nonprofit manager, a fundraiser, public speaker, and student advocate.
In 1995, when Lillian Moy became executive director of the Legal Aid Society of Northeastern New York, the job she would hold for the next 27 years, nonprofit law firms that provided civil legal services for the poor were hardly major political players.
By Moy’s second year, their funding was on the chopping block in Congress.
“One of my friends said that year that the only thing less popular in Washington D.C. than a poor person was a poor person with a lawyer,” Moy said recently.
In more than a quarter-century since that time, Moy led the society to expand its services to litigants, its level of financial and volunteer support from law firms and its coverage area from six upstate counties to 16. After 27 years, Moy will retire on Dec. 16, capping a career that’s brought much-needed legal representation for the underserved, as well as accolades from some of the highest-profile legal minds in Albany and beyond.
“Her passion, perseverance, and tireless pursuit of justice are inspiring. We could not have asked for a better leader,” James Hacker, a managing partner in the firm of E. Stewart Jones Hacker Murphy and the chair of the society’s board of directors, said at a gala celebration in Moy’s honor at the Albany Capital Center on Nov. 9.
“Lillian has been a driving force in increasing access to justice to meet the needs of our low-income communities,” Hacker said. “Her work has helped tens of thousands of families and individuals access the legal services they need to help with unemployment, homelessness prevention, education, disability, and hundreds of other civil legal matters.”
Nic Rangel ’12 is set to become the next Executive Director of the Legal Aid Society of Northeastern New York (LASNNY) this December.
LASNNY and Albany Law School have deep and extensive connections with dozens of students working with the organization annually and law school alumni serving as LASNNY staff and board members.
“Nic is the person we need to take LASNNY into our next century,” said James E. Hacker ’84, LASNNY Board Chair in a statement. Hacker is also a member of the law school’s Board of Trustees. “We have grown in size and capacity to serve our low-income clients, and with Nic at the helm we are confident in our future.”
“It is a tremendous honor to be entrusted with leading the largest nonprofit law firm in the capital region,” said Rangel in a statement. “The Legal Aid Society of Northeastern New York provides critical legal services across sixteen counties on issues ranging from tenant protections to education rights, and more. Access to civil legal services saves lives and helps stabilize families. I look forward to further empowering the organization and its staff to continue doing this outstanding and meaningful work into our next chapter as it prepares to celebrate its 100-year anniversary in 2023.”
The Legal Aid Society of Northeastern New York (LASNNY) is pleased to announce the selection of Attorney Nic Rangel as LASNNY’s next Executive Director. Nic will succeed Lillian Moy, who served as LASNNY’s Executive Director for the past 27 years.
“Nic is the person we need to take LASNNY into our next century,” said James E. Hacker, LASNNY Board Chair. “We have grown in size and capacity to serve our low-income clients, and with Nic at the helm we are confident in our future.” Nic is leaving her position as the Second Deputy Counsel to the New York State Senate Majority, Office of Counsel and Program. There she was on the Conference Ethics Counsel, and she oversees a team of staff and multiple legislative committees.
The Legal Aid Society of Northeastern New York (LASNNY) is pleased to announce the selection of Attorney Nic Rangel as LASNNY’s next Executive Director. Nic will succeed Lillian Moy, who served as LASNNY’s Executive Director for the past 27 years.
“Nic is the person we need to take LASNNY into our next century,” said James E. Hacker, LASNNY Board Chair. “We have grown in size and capacity to serve our low-income clients, and with Nic at the helm we are confident in our future.”
Nic is leaving her position as the Second Deputy Counsel to the New York State Senate Majority, Office of Counsel and Program. There she was on the Conference Ethics Counsel, and she oversees a team of staff and multiple legislative committees. Nic is a Regional Deputy for the Hispanic National Bar Association, leads the Capital Region National Lawyers Guild Chapter, and is a member of other local Bars. She currently sits on the Advisory Board for the Government Law Center at Albany Law School, the Advisory Board for Rockefeller College of Public Affairs & Policy at the University of Albany, and the Board of Directors for the University at Albany Alumni Association. Nic is a volunteer with the Legal Aid Society of Northeastern New York (LASNNY) Private Attorney Involvement (PAI) program and serves on the New York State Attorney Admissions Committee on Character and Fitness for the Third Judicial District Appellate Division. She has experience as an organizational leader, a nonprofit manager, a fundraiser, public speaker, and student advocate.
“It is a tremendous honor to be entrusted with leading the largest nonprofit law firm in the capital region,” said Nic Rangel, incoming Executive Director. “The Legal Aid Society of Northeastern New York provides critical legal services across sixteen counties on issues ranging from tenant protections to education rights, and more. Access to civil legal services saves lives and helps stabilize families. I look forward to further empowering the organization and its staff to continue doing this outstanding and meaningful work into our next chapter as it prepares to celebrate its 100-year anniversary in 2023.”
Lillian Moy, who will be stepping down as Executive Director on December 16, said of Nic Rangel, “She is a rising star in our state, and she’ll be a great leader for LASNNY. I’m happy to be handing leadership to Nic, and I know the program will continue to expand its success under her leadership.”
Nic has a B.A. and a Master’s in Public Administration from SUNY at Albany, and a law degree from Albany Law School.
From all across the country, people recorded messages of congratulations to Lillian M. Moy on her retirement, after 40 years of service working for access to justice for all.
The Legal Aid Society of Northeastern New York honored a woman Wednesday night, who is retiring after decades of service. Lillian Moy is the executive director of LASNY and has worked a legal career that spans 40 years.
“Along with the long hours and the law wages came the opportunity to change people’s lives by giving them housing, stable income and regular healthcare, and there really could not have been a better job,” she said.
Gail Brown moved into a new apartment in early 2020 with her partner, adult son and several grandchildren.
The home in the city’s Goose Hill neighborhood was supposed to be a fresh start. But Brown’s life was cast into upheaval when she was laid off from her job at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. She was also grappling with several issues at her new home, including second-floor windows that wouldn’t open.
Brown ultimately ended up living at a hotel, caught in the dueling vortex of the pandemic and a complicated issue with which the city has long grappled: How to enforce its “order to vacate” process.
The order has a degree of ambiguity that has led to several high-profile gaps in the process, including when the city attempted to evict occupants of the problem-plagued Wedgeway in late 2019 over unsafe conditions, an order tenants ignored until authorities cut power to the building.
Earlier that year, a house fire in the city’s Hamilton Hill neighborhood exposed potentially life-threatening gaps in the procedure when the city acknowledged there was no way to enforce emergency eviction orders.
Two years ago, Brown called the city’s code enforcement bureau after unsuccessfully trying to get her landlord to fix the problems at the Carrie Street apartment she lived in at the time. The owner repaired some of the issues, but not all, and a codes officer deemed the repairs sufficient without inspecting the unit, according to court documents.
The owner later submitted an updated landlord registration form, which triggered a formal inspection by a code enforcement officer that October.
Since some windows still wouldn’t open – and the inspection revealed an electrical violation — the city declared the unit unsafe, forcing Brown and her three-year-old grandson to move into a hotel. There she paid a rate that was almost double her monthly rent.
“With tenants, a lot of time, they have to choose between reporting an issue and becoming homeless and not reporting an issue in their apartment,” said David Crossman, the then-Legal Aid Society lawyer who handled Brown’s case.
The Commission to Reimagine the Future of New York’s Courts announces two additional public hearings, to be held in Buffalo and New York City, as part of its series of statewide hearings to evaluate the technology, practices, and policies adopted by the state courts in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Western New York Hearing: October 6, 2022 • 9:30 AM • Old Erie County Hall, 92 Franklin St., Buffalo, NY 14202
New York City Hearing: October 31, 2022 • 9:30 AM • New York City Bar, 42 W. 44th St., New York, NY 10036
