Law Review Dinner will honor Alan Carrel ’67 and Mary Joanne Dowd ’80

The honorees are Alan Carrel ’67, vice dean at SUNY Buffalo Law School, and Mary Joanne Dowd ’80, a bankruptcy attorney who serves on the Dean’s Advisory Council. The April 24 event will begin at 6 p.m. at the Park Country Club in Amherst.

“We wanted to honor alumni who have been very involved with the school,” says Lauren Skompinski, a third-year law student who, as managing editor of the Buffalo Law Review, is the student chair of the dinner. “We ask the honorees to talk about their experience at the school and how they took that and made a career out of it.” Final selection was made by the journal’s nine-member editorial board.

Carrel, who has announced that he will retire in January 2015, was business editor of the Buffalo Law Review during his time as a Law School student. After graduation,he worked in litigation for the firm Rosen, Yasinow, Roberts, Rich and Carrel where he was a named partner. He joined the Law School staff in 1978 and headed the offices of alumni relations, career services, development, publications and public relations, as well as playing leadership roles in admissions, student services, budgeting and facilities. He was the first vice dean in the Law School’s history, and among other accomplishments co-created the GOLD Group for young alumni, established the Dean’s Advisory Council and personally obtained more than $23 million in contributions for the Law School during his long career.

In service to the profession, Carrel was on the statewide board of directors for the New York State Continuing Legal Education Program, and served on the boards of both the Legal Aid Bureau of Buffalo and the Volunteer Lawyers Project. 

Dowd is a partner in the Bankruptcy and Financial Restructuring Group at Arent Fox in Washington, D.C. Previously she served as a law clerk to two U.S. bankruptcy judges for the Western District of New York, Hon. Beryl McGuire and Hon. John W. Creahan. She also worked at a major law firm in New York and taught bankruptcy and creditors’ rights as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center.

Dowd sits on the advisory board for the American Bankruptcy Institute, part of Georgetown University Law Center’s “View from the Bench” program. In 1996 and 2011 she was a member of the District of Columbia Local Bankruptcy Rules Committee, and she has served on the Chapter 7 bankruptcy panel for the District of Maryland.