Mamdani’s primary win jolts legal industry

Progressive courts. A revamped Law Department. An end to Rikers.

New York public-interest attorneys have high hopes for a potential Zohran Mamdani mayoralty. But their private firm peers are wary.

While some aspects of the democratic socialist’s agenda — like tax hikes on the wealthy — would require approval from Albany, his influence on the city’s courts and law-enforcement would have fewer checks. The mayor appoints city court judges and leaders of the city’s Law Department, Police Department, Department of Correction, and Department of Investigation.

“A Mayor Mamdani would be a breath of fresh air for access to justice,” said Steve Banks, the ex-New York City Department of Social Services commissioner and ex-Legal Aid head who’s now doing legal work on behalf of the homeless, indigent and nonprofits after leaving Paul Weiss.

“But no one should be measuring the drapes right now, because there is still work to be done,” Banks told me, “and he has built a campaign that is laser focused on taking on each challenge as it comes.”

Mamdani won a stunning upset victory over Andrew Cuomo, a former three-term governor, in Tuesday’s New York City mayoral Democratic primary. In the general election, Mamdani is facing Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa, the Republican candidate, and Mayor Eric Adams and attorney Jim Walden, both running as independents. Cuomo hasn’t decided if he’ll mount an independent bid.

A 33-year-old state legislator representing Queens, Mamdani had the backing of a 4,000-person indigent legal services union, the Association of Legal Advocates and Attorneys. Cuomo had a $25 million political action committee with cash from Sullivan & Cromwell partners and high-profile practitioners like Roberta Kaplan.

“It would be revolutionary to have a mayor who has stood beside advocates for closing Rikers, ending solitary confinement, and holding police accountable,” Eliza Orlins, a Manhattan-based public defender and Mamdani backer who mounted an unsuccessful 2021 bid for district attorney, told me. “It would be life-changing for our clients to expand things like diversion courts and restorative justice.”

The enthusiasm isn’t industrywide in the nation’s largest legal market. While New York City attorneys tend to lean liberal, Mamdani may be too far left for some, and he’s raised concerns in the business world, which makes up part of Big Law’s clientele.

For lawyers looking for an alternative, Walden should hold appeal if Cuomo doesn’t run, said Daniel R. Alonso, a white-collar defense attorney at Vedder Price in Manhattan.

“I have huge concerns about who Mamdani would appoint,” Alonso said, adding New York has “a public-safety problem” that Mamdani’s picks could exacerbate. “I’d like to think Big Law is going to do what I did, which is look at Walden and realize he is Mr. Integrity and not an ideologue,” Alonso said. (Mamdani’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.)

Alonso is not alone, according to other lawyers I spoke to. “Many in Big Law have real concerns about what a Mamdani administration would mean,” veteran Wall Street attorney Richard Farley told me.

Some high-profile attorneys have already flocked to Walden, an ex-Gibson Dunn partner who’s now a partner at Walden Macht Haran & Williams. Former Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance, who’s now a Baker McKenzie partner, co-hosted a Walden campaign fundraiser in May, a Walden campaign spokesperson said.

But progressive attorneys are sticking with Mamdani — and dreaming big.

Arthur Z. Schwartz, general counsel at Center for the Independence of the Disabled, New York and a longtime labor lawyer for unions, said he’d like to see Mamdani reshape the law department, called Corporation Counsel.

“I think he’s going to wind up appointing someone very creative who’s going to transform that office into one that isn’t automatically saying, ‘The city’s right, you’re wrong,’ which would be wonderful,” Schwartz told me. “He can tell his corporation counsel to be on the side of community groups suing the city.”

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