Jaeckle Award Winners

David E. Franasiak is a principal at Williams & Jensen PLLC and a member of the firm’s executive committee, where he oversees financial management and serves as a trustee of the firm’s pension plans. Since joining Williams & Jensen in1992, David has been a trusted advisor to leading companies, trade associations, financial institutions, and nonprofit organizations navigating some of the most complex policy and regulatory challenges in Washington.

With decades of experience at the intersection of tax, securities, financial services, and commercial real estate policy, David is known for his strategic counsel and ability to deliver results on Capitol Hill. His work spans a wide range of issues—from data access and antitrust to financial services and natural resources. He is sought after for his deep knowledge of legislative and administrative processes and his pragmatic approach to problem-solving.

Before joining Williams & Jensen, David served as a principal in the Office of the Chairman at Ernst & Young, where he advised on tax, securities, and financial institution matters. He has held senior roles in government and industry, including director of tax at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and he has handled tax, finance, venture, environmental, and energy issues for British Petroleum. Earlier in his career, he was staff director of the Tax Oversight Subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives Small Business Committee and worked on the legislative staff of city and county legislatures in New York.

A recognized voice on emerging financial and regulatory topics, David helped develop and launch the law school’s New York City Program in Finance and Law (now the New York City Program in Business and Law). He has taught in the program for the past two decades. His recent courses have explored securitization, cryptocurrency, and commercial real estate.

In 2017, his service and leadership was recognized by the UB Law Alumni Association with a Distinguished Alumni Award for business.

Justice Ogden’s judicial career has spanned nearly 30 years, beginning with her appointment to Buffalo City Court in 1995. She subsequently served as acting Erie County Court judge and as acting Erie County Family Court judge, giving her the distinction of being the first African-American woman to serve as a family court judge in Western New York. In 2014, she was elected to the New York State Supreme Court bench, and in 2022, she was elevated to the Appellate Division, Fourth Judicial Department.

Prior to joining the judiciary, Justice Ogden worked as a trial lawyer for CIGNA Insurance Companies. She was also a former prosecutor with the Erie County District Attorney’s Office and a former assistant Erie County Attorney.

A 1983 graduate of UB School of Law, Justice Ogden has been actively involved with the law school and its students in many ways, including as an adjunct faculty member, a past president of the UB Law Alumni Association, and a loyal participant in the law school’s mentor program for 1L students.  

She was the recipient of the UB Law Alumni Association’s Distinguished Alumni Award for community service in 2010; and the law school’s Students of Color Trailblazer Award in 2001. At the Class of 2022’s Commencement Ceremony, she was presented the Dean’s Medal for her outstanding achievements and her commitment to justice and the rule of law.

Justice Ogden is a faculty member of the New York State Advisory Committee on Judicial Ethics; a member of the Richard C. Failla LGBTQ+ Commission of the New York Courts; and a member of the Hon. Betty Weinberg Ellerin Judicial Committee on Women in the Courts and its Gender Fairness Subcommittee in the 8^th Judicial District. She is president-elect of the New York Women Judges Association Inc.; and a member of several local bar associations and community leadership boards. She regularly appears as a speaker for civic and community groups, public schools, and churches and is well known for her allegiance to her motto, “lift as you climb.”

Judge Fuentes serves on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, hearing cases from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Elevated to that role in 2000, he assumed senior status in 2016.

A native of Puerto Rico, he served in the U.S. Army for several years before attending Southern Illinois University.  He graduated from UB School of Law in 1975 and went on to earn master’s degrees from Rutgers University and New York University, as well as an honorary doctor of laws degree from Montclair State University.

Judge Fuentes began his legal career in private practice in Jersey City, N.J., before he was appointed a municipal court judge in Newark. Eleven years later, he went on to the New Jersey Superior Court bench, where he served in the Family, Criminal and Civil divisions and as presiding judge in Civil and General Equity. His nomination by President Bill Clinton to the Court of Appeals was approved by the U.S. Senate in a unanimous vote, making him the first Hispanic judge to sit on the Third Circuit.

Judge Fuentes is an emeritus member of the law school’s Dean’s Advisory Council, which consults with the dean on curricular, administrative and professional matters. For many years, he has facilitated opportunities for UB Law students to serve in summer clerkships at the highest level. Eleven of those students have gone on to become federal or state law clerks, and 18 of them have pursued careers in Big Law.  Nine UB Law graduates have served Judge Fuentes as one of his elbow clerks. 

Previously honored by the UB Law Alumni Association with a Distinguished Alumni Award for the judiciary, Judge Fuentes has also been recognized for his exceptional career by the law school’s Students of Color and by the Buffalo Law Review. In 2019, he received a SUNY Honorary Doctorate in Laws presented at the Class of 2019’s Commencement Ceremony, where he advised the new graduates, “If you contribute to just one more person feeling that their rights were protected and that our profession cared about them, you have done a great service.”

Savino is a member of Woods Oviatt’s litigation department. His practice includes business litigation matters involving construction, corporate and partnership dissolution, accounting malpractice, and the Uniform Commercial Code.  He also focuses on insolvency disputes with an emphasis on reorganizations.

In April 2021, Savino was selected as a fellow in the Construction Lawyers Society of America (CLSA), an invitation-only international honorary association composed of preeminent lawyers who focus their practice on construction law.

He has repeatedly earned designation as a “Top 10 Upstate New York Attorney” by Super Lawyers magazine, ranking third in 2013.  His peers have selected him for inclusion in this year's edition of The Best Lawyers in America.  He has been named on Buffalo Business First’s “Who's Who in Law" list for the past eight years, and among the Legal Elite in Western New York for several years, in addition to many other recognitions.

Savino earned his B.A., with high honors, from the University of Rochester and graduated cum laude from UB School of Law in 1975. While in law school, the Buffalo Law Review published a casebook review he authored titled Copyright, Patent, Trademark and Related State Doctrines: Cases and Materials By Paul Goldstein. Since graduation, his co-authored work has been published by the Journal of Accountancy, West’s UCC Bulletin, and Syracuse Law Review.

Savino has taught business law at the UB School of Management since 1979, including in its Executive MBA program. At the law school, he has taught a course on commercial litigation since 2001. In 2019, he received the law school’s Ken Joyce Excellence in Teaching Award for his outstanding performance in the classroom and his longstanding service to the law school.

A past president of the UB Law Alumni Association and a longtime member of the Dean’s Advisory Council, Savino also received a Distinguished Alumni Award for Business Achievements in 2014.

Since high school and throughout his legal career, Savino has performed as a jazz and rock bassist with a number of bands, including more than two decades with fellow UB Law graduate, Kenneth Africano ’85 in their current soul band, Jelly Jar. He has also served on the boards of The Northwest Jazz Festival, The Buffalo Philharmonic, and the Niagara Falls Music Hall of Fame.

Judge Paul L. Friedman has had a varied and distinguished career.  As a U.S. District Court judge, he has presided over many noteworthy cases including John Hinckley’s requests for unsupervised release from St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in the wake of his shooting of President Ronald Reagan; class action lawsuits against the Department of Agriculture for decades of discrimination against Black farmers; a challenge to the Affordable Care Act subsidies provision, which threatened to upend Obamacare; and, currently, approximately two dozen January 6 Capitol insurrection cases.

Prior to his appointment to the bench, Judge Friedman was a partner in the international law firm of White & Case LLP and the managing partner of its Washington, D.C. office. He has also served as Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, assistant to the Solicitor General of the United States, and associate independent counsel for the Iran/Contra Investigation. He has represented the United States and private parties in cases before numerous federal and state courts around the country and argued six cases before the United States Supreme Court.

Judge Friedman is a past president of the District of Columbia Bar, the largest unified bar in the country. He has served as chair of the District of Columbia Judicial Nomination Commission and as a member of the board of trustees of the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia. He was instrumental in founding the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless and the Frederick B. Abramson Memorial Foundation, which gives college scholarships to inner-city high school students. He is currently the Secretary of the American Law Institute and has been an Advisor to the ALI’s Projects on Sentencing and Corporate Compliance.

A graduate of Cornell University before attending UB School of Law, Judge Friedman began his legal career as law clerk to Hon. Aubrey E. Robinson, Jr., a U.S. District Court judge for the District of Columbia, and later to Hon. Roger Robb, U.S. Court of Appeals judge for the D.C. Circuit.

Judge Friedman received Distinguished Alumni Awards from the UB Law Alumni Association in 1998 and the Buffalo Law Review in 2016. He has been a steady supporter of the law school and its students, giving the keynote address at the 2005 Commencement Ceremony and hosting summer networking events for UB Law alumni and students at the U.S. District Courthouse. He is an emeritus member of the Dean’s Advisory Council.

Judge Scott spent more than three decades on the bench, stepping down as an active U.S. magistrate judge in 2015. The first African American to serve as a federal judge in the Western District of New York, he continued in semi-retirement to hear a reduced caseload until his recent passing in February of this year.

Judge Scott began his legal career as an assistant county attorney with the Erie County Law Department and later joined the Buffalo Law Department as an assistant corporation counsel. He then served as the first African American assistant U.S. Attorney for the Western District of New York.

In 1979, Judge Scott joined the state attorney general’s Buffalo Office as deputy assistant attorney general-in-charge of claims and litigation. He went on to become assistant attorney general-in-charge of the Buffalo regional office of the New York State Department of Law. He was the first African American to head the second largest regional office in the State of New York.

His judicial career began when he ran for Buffalo City Court judge in 1984 and was elected to a 10-year term, then re-elected in 1994. He left that position in 1995 to ascend to the federal bench.

Judge Scott created the U.S. District Court’s Re-entry Court, in which convicted defendants who have served their sentence receive job training, legal assistance, and other help to ease their transition back into society. He served as a role model and mentor for countless law students and practitioners and held numerous leadership roles in Buffalo community organizations, including Niagara University, Canisius College, Buffalo Urban League, the New York State Judicial Task Force on Domestic Violence, Sisters of Charity Hospital, the National Federation for Just Communities of WNY, and many more.

Throughout his career, Judge Scott remained active and engaged with the law school. He was a member of the Dean’s Advisory Council and also served UB Law as an adjunct professor, teaching trial technique courses for both the J.D. program and the criminal law and general Master of Laws programs. He presided over the first federal court trial held in the law school's Francis M. Letro Courtroom.

Under the Law School’s 18th dean, R. Nils Olsen Jr., scholarly productivity and community service reached record levels, and the school rebuilt the loyalty and involvement of its alumni. He also helped develop the UB 2020 strategic plan and lent his support to the University’s renewed commitment to civic engagement. Olsen has advised numerous community-based, citizen environmental groups and several local municipalities on environmental law issues.

Prior to passing away in March, 2020, Michael A. Telesca was a U.S. District Court judge for the Western District of New York, and was chief justice of that court from 1989 to 1996. He was a District Court judge, based in Rochester, and in 1996 was appointed to the federal Alien Terrorist Removal Court. He served on numerous boards of directors and advisory boards, including those for the Association for Mentally Retarded Persons, the National Kidney Foundation and the Genesee Hospital Foundation.

Currently of counsel in the Buffalo law firm Phillips Lytle, Thomas R. Beecher Jr. has left a lasting impression on Western New York through his involvement in myriad business and charitable initiatives. Beecher served as chair of the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus, a non-profit corporation founded to cultivate a world-class medical campus in downtown Buffalo. He was also board chairman of Buffalo General Hospital from 1991 to 1994 and co-founded the Buffalo Inner-City Scholarship Opportunity Network.

Ann T. Mikoll was the first woman elected to serve on a New York State appellate court and a lifelong advocate for the cultural and educational training of young people. Before her appellate court election, Mikoll served as assistant corporation counsel for the City of Buffalo, for 14 years as a Buffalo City Court judge, and on the state Supreme Court. She retired in 1999 as senior associate justice of the Appellate Division, 3rd Department.

• Listen to Ann Mikoll's oral history

Kenneth F. Joyce taught at the Law School from 1964 to 2008. His teaching and scholarship focused on “death and taxes” – income, estate and gift taxation, and estates, trusts and estate planning. In addition to his teaching and research, Joyce has been at the forefront of law reform through legislation in New York. He served as executive director of the New York State Law Revision Commission from 1985 to 2000.

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William R. Greiner spent 42 years at the University at Buffalo as president, provost and longtime Law School faculty member. Greiner joined the law faculty in 1967 and was appointed UB’s 13^th president in 1991. He served in that position until 2003, overseeing a period of unprecedented growth and solidifying UB’s place as a top-flight research university. He was known as the quintessential university citizen, and he cherished his role as professor and mentor.

Currently senior counsel in the Buffalo law firm Magavern Magavern & Grimm, James L. Magavern has served on the law school’s Dean’s Advisory Council. He also has taught a wide variety of courses at the Law School, including contracts, civil procedure, counseling small business, environmental management, municipal law, and state and local government finance. He also has served as president of the Erie County Bar Association and as chair of Buffalo’s Charter Revision Commission.

Vincent E. Doyle Jr.’s quick wit, love for the law and passion for the underdog carried him through a long career as a defense lawyer, trial judge and chief administrative judge for the State Supreme Court, 8th Judicial District. Among his accomplishments was persuading Erie County to build a new Family Court and renovate the old County Courthouse. He also set up speedier matrimonial courts and oversaw the creation of drug courts, commercial courts, mental health courts and domestic violence courts.

Erma Hallett Jaeckle worked as a patent attorney with Carborundum Corp. and then served in the legal department of the U.S. Coast Guard’s Merchant Marine Division during World War II. After her first husband died in 1950, she moved to St. Petersburg, Fla. There, over the next 25 years, she worked as a trial lawyer; formed the area’s first all-female law firm; and was one of the first women to serve on the executive board of the St. Petersburg Bar Association.

Joseph S. Mattina has been a lawyer, an assistant district attorney, a Buffalo City Court judge, an Erie County Court judge, a New York State Supreme Court justice and, for most of his career on the bench, a Surrogate’s Court judge, handling trusts and estates, guardianships and adoptions. He was one of only 16 judges nationwide to be inducted as a charter member of the National Judicial College Hall of Fame.

A consummate teacher, Louis A. Del Cotto taught tax law at the Law School from 1951 to 1959, took two years off to teach at Columbia Law School, then returned in 1961 and remained until his death in 2005. He specialized in tax matters as a partner in the law firm of Jaeckle, Fleischmann, Kelly, Swart and Augspurger, and in 1981 he joined the Buffalo law firm Kavinoky and Cook as tax counsel.

• Listen to Louis Del Cotto's oral history

Following five years in private practice, in 1973 Samuel L. Green was appointed and then elected a judge on Buffalo City Court; in 1978 he was elected to the state Supreme Court; and in 1983 Gov. Mario Cuomo appointed him to the Appellate Division, Fourth Department, sitting in Rochester. He held that post for 38 years, winning praise for his evenhandedness. Upon his retirement, a courtroom in the Appellate Division was named in his honor.

Founder of the law firm Lippes Mathias Wexler Friedman, Gerald S. Lippes has a long history of service to cultural and civic organizations. He has served on the boards of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, the New York State Council on the Arts and the UB Buffalo Foundation. He is a past chairman of Kaleida Health Care Systems, Women’s and Children’s Hospital of Buffalo and the Roswell Park Cancer Institute, and co-chaired the record-breaking Campaign for UB fund drive. 

Dale M. Volker retired from the New York State Senate in 2010 after 35 years of service – years in which he helped bring funding to Western New York for such projects as the modernization of Roswell Park Cancer Institute and the $1 billion reconstruction of the Buffalo city schools. A former Depew police officer and a staunch Republican, he was proud of his ability to reach across party lines when it would benefit his constituents.

A tireless advocate for elementary, high school and college students in Buffalo and across New York State, Arnold B. Gardner served as Buffalo Board of Education president, a State University of New York trustee and a member of the Board of Regents. A longtime partner in the Kavinoky & Cook law firm, he said one of his proudest achievements was playing a key role in the push to allow women to become regular members of the Buffalo Club.

A renowned basketball player at Canisius College, where he led the Golden Griffins to three appearances in the NCAA tournament, Henry Nowak served as a Democratic congressman from 1975 to 1993. Before going to Washington, he served as Erie County comptroller for 10 years. In Congress, he was a member of the Committee on Public Works and Transportation throughout his time in office, winning federal funding for such projects as Buffalo’s light rail system and the Erie Basin Marina.

As a professor at the Law School, Albert R. Mugel mentored generations of students in the vagaries of tax law. A renowned member of the Buffalo legal community, he was a founder of Jaeckle Fleischmann & Mugel, one of the region’s largest law firms. There he concentrated his practice in income, estate and gift taxation. Each spring the Law School hosts the Albert R. Mugel National Tax Law Moot Court Competition, now entering its 40th year.

• Listen to Albert Mugel's oral history

Robert C. Schaus and his brother, Maynard C. Schaus Jr., enrolled together at the Law School, the third generation of their family to study there. Upon graduation, they practiced law together in their father’s office in downtown Buffalo for more than 30 years. Robert Schaus taught trial technique at the Law School, served as secretary of the Law Alumni Association for more than 30 years, and co-authored the centennial history of the school with James Arnone ’85.

Dolores Denman broke barriers, becoming the first woman to serve as presiding judge in the Appellate Division of New York State Supreme Court. A former Buffalo City Court judge and Erie County Court judge, she was elected to the state Supreme Court in 1976. The next year, she was appointed to the Appellate Division, Fourth Department. She was named presiding justice in 1991. The division’s courthouse in Rochester is named in her honor.

Wade J. Newhouse, who joined the School of Law in 1959 and retired in 1993, was an expert in constitutional law. He served as the school’s 14th dean, from 1986 to 1987, a term that included the law school’s gala centennial celebration. During his tenure at the law school, he also served as acting law librarian, served as faculty representative to the architects of John Lord O’Brian Hall, and organized a clinic dealing with school problems, such as suspensions and educational entitlements. Neuhouse passed away in May, 2014.

• Listen to Wade Newhouses' oral history

After service in the Marine Corps during World War II, John T. Curtin earned his law degree, worked as a private practitioner from 1949 to 1961, then served as U.S. Attorney for the Western District of New York from 1961 to 1967. President Lyndon B. Johnson nominated him to a U.S. District Court judgeship in 1967, and he served as chief judge from 1974 to 1989. His legacy includes a controversial 1976 decision ordering the desegregation of the Buffalo public schools.

A partner with Jaeckle, Fleischmann & Mugel, Manly Fleischmann served in important posts with the federal government, including administrator of the Defense Production Administration during the Korean War, and as chairman from 1969 to 1972 of a New York State commission that proposed sweeping changes to the way public schools in the state were run. He also served as assistant general counsel of the federal War Production Board during World War II. Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller appointed him a SUNY trustee in 1965. 

As Erie County district attorney from 1963 to 1973, Michael F. Dillon was known for his vigorous prosecution of even petty crime. When the high school in his hometown Lackawanna, for instance, noticed shortages of food, he had a hidden camera installed and uncovered large-scale theft by employees. Dillon was appointed an associate justice of the Appellate Division of State Supreme Court by Gov. Hugh L. Carey in 1975 and became a presiding justice four years later.

Now a SUNY Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus, Thomas E. Headrick served as law school dean from 1976 to 1985, after serving administrative posts at Lawrence University and Stanford Law School. An early exemplar of School of Law's interdisciplinary focus, he holds a Ph.D. in political science from Stanford University. He also was a Fulbright Scholar at Oxford University.

Hon. William J. Regan served as Erie County surrogate from 1963 to 1981. During his long career in practice and on the bench, he served the community with great distinction. An award is his name, supported from a fund donated by friends of Judge Regan, honors “the member of the graduating class who has demonstrated the greatest proficiency in estates and surrogate’s law, and who is motivated by a strong concern for public service and public welfare.”

Known to his friends as “Jack” and to former students as “Dean Hyman,” Jacob D. Hyman began his legal career in New York City. He moved to Washington, D.C., to join the legal staff of the Wage and Hour Division of the federal Department of Labor, then the wartime Office of Price Administration. He joined the Law School faculty in 1946, served as dean from 1953 to 1964, then returned to teaching. In all, he spent 54 years in association with the school. 

Following service during World War II as a military government officer in Europe and more than a decade in private practice, Matthew J. Jasen was appointed by New York Gov. W. Averell Harriman to fill a vacancy on state Supreme Court in 1957, then elected the same year to a 14-year term. In 1967, he was elected to the Court of Appeals, where he served until reaching the mandatory retirement age in 1985. 

A member of the Securities and Exchange Commission under President Harry S. Truman, Robert I. Millonzi was a partner in the Buffalo law firm Diebold & Millonzi. He also chaired a commission to study the distribution of inexpensive hydroelectric power in the state. An avid supporter of the performing arts, he served on the executive committee of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and on the board of trustees of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, in Washington, D.C.

A prominent Buffalo attorney who played a large role in the hiring of three University at Buffalo presidents – Robert L. Ketter, Steven B. Sample and William R. Greiner – served as chairman of the UB Council. He was also a member of the board of trustees of the UB Foundation. The M. Robert Koren Center for Clinical Legal Education is part of the Law School’s Charles B. Sears Law Library.

Clarence R. Runals was a well-known trial attorney with the Niagara Falls firm Runals, Broderick & Shoemaker. He was a delegate to the state constitutional convention in 1938, and threw himself into community service, serving as president of the Niagara County and Niagara Falls bar associations, the city’s Community Chest and the Chamber of Commerce, among others. From his home overlooking Goat Island, he could walk the quarter-mile distance to his office on Third Street. 

Frank G. Raichle Jr. practiced law in Buffalo for 65 years and was one of the best-known trial lawyers in New York State. A former law partner of Law School Dean Carlos C. Alden, Raichle also received the Distinguished Alumnus Award. He served as president of the American College of Trial Lawyers. A longtime associate of Canisius College, he made a gift that endowed the Raichle Pre-Law Center there. 

Charles S. Desmond’s long career on the bench began when New York Gov. Herbert H. Lehman appointed him to fill a vacancy on the state Supreme Court. He was elected to the Court of Appeals, New York’s highest court, in 1940 and re-elected in 1954. In 1959 he was elected chief judge, and left the bench in 1966, having reached the mandatory retirement age of 70. In retirement, he taught at the law school.

The inaugural Edwin F. Jaeckle Award went, fittingly enough, to the award’s namesake. Jaeckle was a founding partner of the firm Jaeckle, Fleischmann & Mugel, and his early years of practice in Buffalo were accomplished without benefit of typewriters, telephones or carbon paper. He made significant gifts to the school in 1966 and 1982 that continue to endow programs including the Jaeckle Center for State and Local Government Law. He also served as New York State Republican Chairman, and served as campaign manager for Thomas E. Dewey.