Investing in excellence

Christopher J. O'Brien has invested countless hours in the Law School's Trial Advocacy Program, which he co-directs with Judge Thomas P. Franczyk, and in the trial technique courses he has taught for 15 years. Now, with a $100,000 gift to provide scholarships for future trial attorneys, he is investing in the strength of those programs – and the future health of the Western New York bar.

The hope, he says, is that the support will go to "a second-year student who has already competed on a couple of trial teams and who might be thinking, ‘I really have to get a job in the third year; I can't afford to be involved in the trial program.' Hopefully this will allow them to rethink that."

O'Brien says the gift recognizes "the Law School administration's focus on and dedication to training lawyers who are ready to practice the day they pass the bar. Certainly the trial program is a critical part of that."

The gift also honors O'Brien's late father, Gerard J. O'Brien '52, who had a long and successful career as a civil trial lawyer in Western New York. "He worked his way through high school and through two years at Canisius College," Christopher O'Brien says. "Back then you could go to law school after two years of college and get a bachelor of laws degree. Law school was a different world then. You'd start the year with 150 students, and at the end of that year 50 students would be expelled; they'd only keep the top 100.

"Now the thinking is that if we admit you, we're making a commitment to you, and we're going to provide the resources and assistance you need to graduate."

O'Brien got his own legal training at Washington & Lee University School of Law, in Virginia, but he has poured himself into the work of SUNY Buffalo Law.

"I really look forward to teaching," he says. "I get great joy out of it; it's never work for me. And it helps me do my job better, because when I've got a law student asking me why I ask a question a certain way, it makes me think about it and ask myself, what's the better way to do it?"

Consistent with his father's insistence on ethical conduct and professional collegiality, O'Brien says trial technique students get a healthy dose of ethics as part of their training.

"We teach them how to argue ethically," he says. "There are schools we compete against that don't always follow the rules of the competition; they tend to go outside of the fact pattern and argue improperly. We teach our students that you never sink to that level – that we are SUNY Buffalo and we are held to a higher level. My hope is that these lessons will stay with the students throughout their careers."

O'Brien encourages lawyers in other areas of specialty to donate in support of those areas. "The only way the Law School gets better is if we have the financial means to do it," he says. "President [Satish K.] Tripathi and Dean Mutua made a commitment to make development a priority, and the faculty have supported it. When you look at some of the endowments of the private schools, they have far more money in scholarships to distribute. President Tripathi has said we need to have a great increase in the number of endowed chairs as well, and that's something I would ask the alumni to consider."