Ethically Advocating for Those Who Served: A Veterans Law CLE

Friday, Nov. 16, 2018

A CLE co-sponsored by the Veteran’s Legal Practicum and the Bar Association of Erie County’s Committee for Servicemembers and Veterans.

Attorneys may earn 3.0 NYS CLE credits; 1.0 in Ethics, and 2.0 in Skills (transitional or non-transitional).

Featured Speakers

Anthony J. Kuhn '15, Esq., Managing Partner, Tully Rinckey PLLC, Co-Director, Veterans Legal Practicum

Benjamin P. Pomerance, Deputy Director for Program Development, New York State Division of Veterans’ Affairs

Kim Diana Connolly, Professor of Law, Co-Director, Veterans Legal Practicum

Jeffrey E. Marion, Esq., Chair, Bar Association of Erie County’s Committee for Servicemembers and Veterans

Our Speakers

Professor and Vice Dean Kim Diana Connolly directs the experiential learning program here at UB School of Law, and took the lead with the UB team in applying for the Justice for Heroes grant that led to the UB School of Law Veterans Law Practicum. She helps teach the experiential components of that course, along with her work on other access to justice issues through teaching additional clinics.

She served as a VISTA volunteer after graduating with an undergraduate chemistry degree from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, and received her certification in non-profit management from Duke University while doing anti-poverty work for three years. She then studied law at Georgetown, and went into private practice in Washington, DC. She thereafter enrolled in a graduate law program at night while working so that she could apply to enter academic teaching. A inveterate student even after more than a dozen years with tenure, Professor Connolly is currently completing her graduate certification in Restorative Practices, and among other things, she has learned about how restorative justice serves the nation’s veterans through that program.

Professor Connolly is also the proud daughter of a U.S. Army veteran. She dreams of firmly establishing UB as a top place for veterans to become the attorneys of tomorrow and would love to create a veterans clinic that can help our local veterans and military for many years to come.

A native Western New Yorker, Anthony J. Kuhn '15, Esq., is a decorated Combat veteran who has served for over 22 years as soldier and trainer in the U.S. Army, and currently serves as a member of the Army Reserve. Kuhn is a practicing attorney and the Managing Partner of Tully Rinckey, PLLC, Buffalo office, the chair of the firm’s nation-wide military law practice group and the chair of the firm’s nation-wide national security and security clearance practice group. Kuhn is an active volunteer member of four boards and an adjunct professor in the School of Law's Clinical Legal Education program.

For well over 20 years, Jeffrey Marion has represented people injured by unsafe products, people denied Social Security Disability benefits, and Veterans denied Service-Connected Disability Compensation. He is a Senior Deputy Town Attorney for the Town of Amherst, and a frequent CLE lecturer on Veterans’ Disability Law, as well as on focus groups and juror persuasion.

He is the Past Chair of the Erie County Bar Association Young Lawyers Committee, High School Mock Trial Competition, and the Committee for the Disabled. He is the current Chair of the Erie County Bar Association Committee on Veterans and Service-Members’ Legal Issues. He also is a Co-Chair of the American Association for Justice’s Opioid Litigation Group, and Vice Chair of the Section Leaders Council. He is a Past Chair of that groups Social Security Disability Law Section.

Jeffrey Marion is a graduate of SUNY College at Geneseo and the Ohio Northern University Claude W. Petit College of Law. Since 1995, he has been admitted to practice the bar in New York State. Marion is admitted to practice in Pennsylvania, Colorado, the Western District of New York and the Supreme Court of the United States.

Benjamin Pomerance, Esq., is the Deputy Director for Program Development for the New York State Division of Veterans’ Affairs. In this role, he serves as the Deputy General Counsel for the agency, as well as working as the agency’s Legislative Liaison and overseeing several of the Division’s programming initiatives. His work focuses on advocacy and assistance for Veterans, Servicemembers, and their families on a wide range of federal and state issues.

Apart from his work for the Division, scholarly journals at Albany, Belmont, Delaware, Florida Coastal, Gonzaga, Hamline, Ohio Northern, Marquette, Maryland, Oregon, and Wyoming law schools have published or will soon publish Pomerance’s articles on topics ranging from elder law to the federal judiciary to freedom of speech in post-revolutionary governments. He also contributed a chapter to an internationally published elder law anthology. The United States Court of Appeals for Veterans’ Claims has cited his written work, as have several books and legal journals.

His recent speaking engagements include panel discussions at the 2018 National Association of Consumer Advocates Convention, the 2017 international Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences Conference, the international Law & Society Conference in 2015, 2016, and 2018, the International Elder Law & Policy Conference, and the International Conference on Contracts, as well as facilitating programs in every region of New York State regarding benefits, programs, and services for Veterans and their families.

Pomerance graduated as the salutatorian of his class from Albany Law School in 2013. While at Albany Law, he founded and directed the school’s Veterans’ Rights Pro Bono Project, for which he received the “President’s Pro Bono Service Award” from the New York State Bar Association. He served as the Executive Editor for Symposium for the Albany Law Review, led the school’s student chapter of the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys, and published a report about human rights concerns confronting America’s aging prison population as an Edgar & Margaret Sandman Fellow with the Government Law Center.

Apart from his work in the law, Pomerance is an avid arts journalist with more than 500 published articles, a pursuit for which he has received first-place awards in feature writing from the New York State Press Association.