Week 4 Reflection- Personal Contribution

Jared Levine

6/21-6/25

Throughout my fourth week as an intern for Leventhal, Mullaney & Blinkoff, LLP, I felt more involved with the work of the firm than ever before. I had the privilege of working alongside both Mr. Blinkoff and Mr. Leventhal, doing the same work as them, three days this week, while I spent the rest performing legal research that I was able to see the direct impact of. Alongside gaining great experience, I also feel as though I’ve formed good relationships with the firm’s members and I am thoroughly enjoying their mentorship

This week, I spent three days with Mr. Blinkoff and Mr. Leventhal in various local government buildings working on behalf of those localities. The firm is hired by several villages, towns and counties to perform necessary ethical reviews of those who are employed by those respective localities. Those who hold certain positions, volunteer on different boards and commissions, or are employed by certain agencies must submit financial disclosure forms to the localities that employ them. These forms show an individual’s financial holdings, assets, income sources, family members, and other information. It is the job of the firm to review these financial disclosure forms to assess whether or not any government employees maintain problematic conflicts of interests. Additionally, the firm notes if anyone has failed to disclose or if anyone has incompletely or incorrectly filled out the form. Once all forms are reviewed, the firm will create a final ethics report for the localities that hire them.

On Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, we completed this work for the village of Oyster Bay, and Friday for the County of Westchester. Each day, Mr. Blinkoff, Mr. Leventhal and I went through hundreds of documents. The two attorneys quickly taught me how to properly review these forms, and employed me to their ethics review team. I took great pride in the fact that we were all performing the same work collaboratively, and I greatly enjoyed seeing where each town’s government matters play out. Additionally, these days provided a great opportunity for me to casually chat with both of the attorneys I’ve been working with. They are both excellent people and I have very much enjoyed hearing their stories and getting to know them.

The rest of my week was spent in the office taking on a variety of my normal tasks, primarily research. As I learned, this week was particularly stressful for law firms across NY as a result of the end of the state’s emergency protocols for COVID. Because all COVID restrictions were created in an emergency format, the rescinding of this state of emergency also meant the end of all of these policies, reverting the law to what it was two years ago. This raised many questions in regard to what courts, attorneys, and agencies could or could not do in terms of making necessary appearances virtually and mandating in-person participation. Many of these questions required lots of legal research, that which I was tasked with. As priorly mentioned, I was able to find good answers to many of the questions Mr. Blinkoff asked me, and for that I felt accomplished. Overall, it was another great week at Leventhal, Mullaney & Blinkoff, LLP and I remain astounded by the great variety of experiences I’ve been fortunate enough to have thus far.