Transition and tradition

Over the years, a lot of non-profit organizations have asked Pamela Davis Heilman ’75 to serve on their boards. She has said yes, a lot, and groups from the United Way to the Shaw Festival to the University at Buffalo have claimed her as their own.

But throughout her career at the Buffalo-based law firm Hodgson Russ – where she is a lead lawyer in the firm’s cross-border Canada/U.S. practice, counseling Canadian businesses and organizations considering expansion into the United States – one constant has been her unwavering support for SUNY Buffalo Law School. A member of the Dean’s Advisory Council since 2004, Heilman brings her strategic and analytical skills to the Law School’s mission. She sees the recent major gift of $100,000 she made to the school with her husband, Robert, a business consultant and 1975 graduate of UB’s MBA program, as one piece of the puzzle of how to make SUNY Buffalo Law the best it can be.

“I’ve come to recognize the need for dollars to be given to support faculty chairs and scholarship,” Heilman says, “and to support scholarships for students so we will be able to attract the absolute best and brightest. Our tuition may be set lower than some, but those other schools are offering more in scholarship aid. Without scholarships, we in fact are not always the most affordable choice, and very, very good students often go elsewhere. To maintain the quality and the diversity of classes we need in order to be a great law school, we need to provide funds for student scholarships.”

As a member as well of the UB Council, she recognizes that the reputation of the Law School reflects on the quality of the University at Buffalo as a whole. And, she says proudly, Hodgson Russ “employs more SUNY Buffalo Law graduates than any other law firm in the country. It’s very important to us that the high reputation of the Law School and UB be maintained and enhanced as much as possible, because this has a direct impact on the reputation of our firm.”

This also is a personal time of transition, as Heilman prepares to retire from her law practice at the end of 2011. “It has been a fabulous career at a fabulous firm,” she says. “I am very, very satisfied with where I am today. I’ve had an extremely active and engaging and in some ways cutting-edge practice, which has been intellectually fulfilling. There is nothing else I need to do career-wise.”

As she reflects on that career, Heilman says, “Much of my success is based on my Law School education at UB and the opportunity that it afforded me to join Hodgson Russ 36 years ago and then become a partner. Without that legal education and without UB being there for someone who did not come from wealth, it would not have happened. Affordable, high-quality public education is so important.”

And on a practical level, as she rediscovers concepts like the weekend and the quiet e-mail inbox, Heilman says it has been helpful to be able to structure the couple’s gift to make it affordable, structuring a payment schedule over several years and including a bequest component as well.

“Given our current transition to retirement, we appreciated the Law School’s flexibility in tailoring the ability to make a gift to our particular circumstances,” she says.