Alumni Liz Gitlin ’87 and Bruce Gitlin ’80 were featured in a New York Law Journal piece about their public interest law firm.
Educating the legal community about the needs of the indigent deaf has been the life’s work of the Gitlins, who themselves are not deaf, and their Upper West Side firm, the New York Center for Law and Justice.
The center, which the Gitlins opened in 2001, has represented the deaf for more than a decade, particularly low-income deaf clients facing eviction, loss of benefits, domestic violence and other poverty-related issues. The firm also has taken political asylum cases for deaf clients from Jamaica, Gambia and the Middle East with help from large firms such as Kirkland & Ellis, Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel and Bracewell & Giuliani.
…
Bruce, 60, and Liz, 58, grew up on Long Island and were high school sweethearts. Bruce got his law degree from Fordham University School of Law before joining his father at the personal injury firm of Gitlin and Greenberg.
Bruce Gitlin’s interest in the deaf community started with a random bulletin in 1981 from deaf educator and activist Huberta Schroedel, who was looking for pro bono attorneys to help her nonprofit organization.
“From the very moment I walked into the room I was fascinated, and I felt this tremendous opportunity to serve,” he said.
Liz Gitlin got a master’s degree in social work from Columbia University and enrolled in Fordham Law in 1984, a year after she and Bruce married. “I wanted to be the lawyer representing the clients,” she said.