June 12, 2026
Cornell is Hiring a Transactional Clinician
By Claude-Étienne Armingaud – Claudé, CC BY 2.5
Cornell Law School is hiring! We are looking for a clinical professor of entrepreneurship law who will work with our Entrepreneurship Law Clinic and our Blassberg-Rice Center for Entrepreneurship Law. Our students work with clients with a diverse range of entrepreneurial efforts, and in the process gain valuable skills for their legal careers. If you are interested in helping to train the next generation of entrepreneurs and the lawyers who will serve them, please consider applying. Or if you know of other suitable candidates, please let them know of this great opportunity in Ithaca.
The full job posting is here.
June 12, 2026 | Permalink | No Comments
June 8, 2026
Divorce and The Housing Market
AI image generated by Reve
Marketplace interviewed me in for this response to a reader’s question, Can Divorce Affect The Housing Market? The story reads,
How much does divorce affect the economy, especially housing prices? In Davis, California, where I live, at least four households on my block have kids who effectively have a second house somewhere else in town with their other parent.
We know the effects divorce can have on household finances — it can lead to a decline in income, especially for women. One study from researchers at the University of Michigan and Boston University found that women increased “their labor in the workforce” following a divorce. But when it comes to the housing market, there’s little economic research on this topic.
The evidence we do have indicates that divorce can lead to a decline in homeownership rates, said Anthony Orlando, an associate professor of finance, real estate and law at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, pointing to one Denmark study from 2019 that used a model to predict the correlation between the two.
“When there’s a divorce, there’s usually a sharp drop in wealth or net worth, because they’re splitting assets and there are costs associated with the divorce, paying for lawyers, etc. and all those things tend to reduce homeownership,” Orlando said. “If you’re only relying on your income rather than also having somebody else’s, you’re less diversified, and you might have more difficulty making the mortgage payments.”
Orlando said he hasn’t seen good studies on how divorce affects housing prices, but if there’s a decline in homeownership demand, then prices could decline.
The inverse is also true – the state of the housing market affects divorce.
“If housing prices increase significantly, there’s some evidence suggesting that divorce rates among homeowners actually goes down, and the reason is because when housing prices increase, there’s less financial stress. The married couple now has a house that’s worth more money,” Orlando said.
Rising rental prices could also make couples more hesitant to take the leap toward divorce. When housing prices go up, so do prices in the rental market. If someone is considering dissolving their marriage and sees high apartment prices, they might decide it doesn’t make financial sense to divorce, Orlando said.
There’s also a correlation between the broader economy and divorce.
“When the economy is hot, people divorce at higher rates, and when the economy is weak, it’s in recession, they divorce at lower rates,” said David Reiss, a law professor at Cornell University who studies housing policy.
Their mortgage may be underwater and they could be financially strapped, making the prospect of divorce difficult, Reiss said.
“Most of us in our day-to-day lives think to ourselves that questions of love and hate and relationships are driven by us as people,” Reiss said. But when you take a 10,000-foot view, you see how much the economy can drive our decisions, Reiss said.
June 8, 2026 | Permalink | No Comments
May 14, 2026
The Real Deal: NYC’s Rent Stabilization Crisis
Jonathan Mines of the Mines Group; David Reiss, former RGB chair; Rafael Cestero of Community Preservation Corporation (Getty, LinkedIn, Mines Group)/Graphic by The Real Deal
The Real Deal quoted me in NY’s Rent Stabilization Crisis. It reads, in part,
The goal for rent-stabilized housing, as panelists from the landlord and tenant sides agreed at a sold-out New York City Bar Association event last week, should be a return to balance and predictability.
In that perfect world, owners get enough revenue to sustain their buildings and earn modest returns, tenants pay their rent, and those who cannot afford it are subsidized by the government, not by the landlord.
Reality check: This scenario is not readily achievable. It might even be impossible.
The consensus among the expert panelists was that the politics that governs rent regulation in New York will continue to result in overcorrections as legislative power swings from one side to the other.
“There is no way that a political process is going to create a good outcome for tenants and buildings over the long run,” said Rafael Cestero, CEO of the Community Preservation Corporation.
Cestero said 36 percent of the huge portfolio of rent-stabilized loans that CPC services have a debt service coverage ratio below 1.0, which means the buildings securing those mortgages lose money every month.
When owners had the upper hand in Albany, “they kept asking for more and more,” he said. “The dynamic has now completely flipped. Tenants have the power in Albany, and continuing to ask for more and more and more is just going to perpetuate the cycle of where we are today.”
And where is that?
“I do think,” said former Rent Guidelines Board chair David Reiss, “we’re in the midst of a slow-moving train wreck.”
May 14, 2026 | Permalink | No Comments
April 27, 2026
Rising Property Tax Assessments
Canton, NY (CC BY-NC 2.0 Decaseconds)
I was interviewed by North Country Public Radio in Canton’s Reassessment Doubled Many Home Values. How Does That Affect Taxes? The story reads,
Last month, Canton residents started receiving letters in the mail notifying them of their new property value assessments. Some people said their home values more than doubled, causing concern about unaffordable tax increases.
Canton’s last property tax assessment was almost two decades ago, in 2008. Since then, the values of people’s properties have changed. They’ve mostly gone up.
The town says properties were assessed at only 60% of their market value, and that the new revaluation brings these property values back up to 100% of their assessed value.
Reassessments have also happened recently in Potsdam, Ogdensburg, and other towns in the North Country. According to the Department of Taxation and Finance, these revaluations are happening to equalize property values so that people are taxed fairly.
But these changes have shocked some Canton residents. At a town board meeting in March, Phillip Burnett said his assessment seemed way too high.
“It’s so far out of whack…we’re talking about a double wide that tripled in 13 years,” said Burnett. “The discrepancy is so large that I don’t have confidence in anybody inside of these four walls, because this is what you voted for. I mean, my hair’s blown back that you guys got it so wrong.”
Town Supervisor Jim Smith says that just because a property value increases, that doesn’t mean your taxes will.
“That does not mean your taxes are going to double. No way, does it mean your taxes are going to double,” said Smith. “They would only double if county, town, and school left their tax rates at the very same rates as what they are, but all those tax rates are going to come down.”
Smith says he’s expecting there to be a reduction in tax rates by next year. That’s because, due to this reassessment, Canton’s tax base is expected to grow from $417 million to $730 million.
David Reiss, a Clinical Professor of Law at Cornell University, says property assessments need to keep up with how neighborhoods change.
“And so if you don’t reassess, you don’t really capture the introduction of the park. You don’t capture the introduction of the highway exit,” says Reiss. “And so you have relative unfairness where maybe both houses were valued at $200,000 15 years ago, but one is now worth $250,000, and then the other’s worth $400,000. And the reassessment is supposed to capture how that has diverged over time.”
Reiss says there are many variables, but it’s important for property owners to understand not just the assessed value of their property, but also their neighbours and the town as a whole.
“You need to understand the tax rate. You need to understand the budget. And then you have a better sense of how this is playing out across the board and also how it’s playing out for each individual property owner.”
Canton residents have the opportunity to contest their new property values at Grievance Days, which start on May 26. Town Supervisor Jim Smith encourages people who have concerns with their assessment to get in touch with the assessor’s office.
Smith says that in the future, he’s hoping to make these assessments happen more often, so that people aren’t surprised by what their property’s assessed value is.
April 27, 2026 | Permalink | No Comments
April 16, 2026
NYC Rent Adjustments and Freezes
NY1 interviewed me this morning in Former Rent Guidelines Board Chair Talks Process, Possibility of Freezing Rent:
Mayor Zohran Mamdani promised to freeze the rent on nearly 1 million stabilized apartments as a signature part of his campaign.
Despite a late push by former Mayor Eric Adams to lock up the rent board for a year, Mamdani was able to appoint a majority of the members who will decide in June whether they agree with his push for a rent freeze.
David Reiss, a former chair of the Rent Guidelines Board, joined “Mornings On 1” to talk about the process and the plausibility of the plan.
Click the link to watch the full interview.
Pat Kiernan and I discussed the column I wrote with Nestor Davidson about the process for determining rent adjustments for NYC rent-stabilized units.
April 16, 2026 | Permalink | No Comments
April 14, 2026
Current Issues in Affordable Housing in New York City
I will be moderating a panel on Rent Freezes, the Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act of 2019 (HSTPA), and Nonpayment at this in-person New York City Bar program on May 7th. The registration link is here and the full program description is below:
This program will provide an inside perspective on the future of affordable housing in New York City. Seasoned practitioners from the private and public sectors will discuss the role of the city, state and federal governments, in conjunction with for-profit developers and not-for-profit organizations, in building and preserving affordable housing. Participants will learn about the statutory, regulatory and business considerations underlying critical topics in affordable housing.
Three expert panels will present on the following:
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- Rent Freezes, the Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act of 2019 (HSTPA), and Nonpayment
- The Community Opportunity to Purchase Act (COPA)
- Case Study – Office to Residential Conversions
The detailed agenda for the day follows.
9:00 am – 9:05 am Introduction & Program Overview
Farhana H. Choudhury, Associate Counsel/Chief of Staff for Legal at NYSHCR
Julia A. Solo, Senior Vice President & Counsel at Federated National Land
9:05 am – 10:05 am Panel 1: Rent Freezes, the Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act of 2019 (HSTPA), and Nonpayment
This panel will focus on the impacts of the HSTPA that have limited rent increases for things like apartment and major capital improvements, the Mamdani administration’s proposal for an extended rent freeze, and post-pandemic rent collection challenges.
Organizers:
Farhana Hassan Choudhury, Associate Counsel/Chief of Staff for Legal
Andrew M. Darcy, Pro Bono Counsel at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP
Moderator:
David Reiss, Professor, Cornell Law School
Panelists:
Doug Apple, CEO, 1811 Consulting
Rafael Cestero, CEO, Community Preservation Corporation (CPC)
Tim Collins, Partner, Collins Dobkin & Miller LLP
Rob Ehrlich, Partner, Lazarus Karp Ehrlich McCourt, LLP
Topics will Include
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- Trends in Court
- Long-Term Sustainability & Expectations Over the Next 5-10 Years
- Potential Solutions
- Public Commission
Question & Answer Session Conclusions
10:05 am – 10:15 am Break
10:15 am – 11:15 am Panel 2: The Community Opportunity to Purchase Act (COPA)
This panel will discuss the current status of the Community Opportunity to Purchase Act (COPA). In December 2025, COPA passed the City Council but was vetoed by outgoing Mayor Adams on his last day in office. Mayor Mamdani and new City Council Speaker Menin did not attempt a veto override when the new City Council was seated in January, and the bill which passed City Council in December is effectively dead for the time being, although many advocates and politicians, including Mayor Mamdani, have vowed to continue the fight for COPA. It’s not clear where COPA will stand in May, but this panel will examine the history and advocacy behind COPA, its operation in Washington, DC and San Francisco, and potential constitutional challenges to the law.
Organizers:
Gerrald Ellis, Deputy General Counsel, Paths Development
Alexandra Hohauser, Associate at Nixon Peabody LLP
Moderator:
Gerrald Ellis, Deputy General Counsel, Paths Development
Panelists:
Erica F. Buckley, Partner, Nixon Peabody LLP
Arielle Hersh, Director of Policy and New Projects, UHAB
Topics will Include
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- Overview of COPA, as proposed, in NYC
- Current status of COPA in NYC
- Discussion of the main sticking points in even getting COPA passed
- Discussion of COPA in Washington, DC and San Francisco
- Potential constitutional challenges
Question & Answer Session Conclusions
11:15 am – 11:25 am Break
11:25 am – 12:25 pm Panel 3: Office to Residential Conversions that include Affordable Housing
This panel will discuss the challenges and benefits to office-to-residential conversions in New York City, including land use considerations, challenges in design, the unique considerations of financing, the 467-m tax incentive and case studies.
Organizers:
Daniel M. Bernstein, Member and Leader of the Tax Incentives and Affordable Housing Department at Rosenberg and Estis, P.C.
Zachary L. Nathanson, Senior Associate Attorney at Adler & Stachenfeld LLP
Moderator:
Daniel M. Bernstein, Member and Leader of the Tax Incentives and Affordable Housing Department at Rosenberg and Estis, P.C.
Panelists:
John Cetra, FAIA, Co-Founder, CetraRuddy Architecture D.P.C.
Tricia Dietz, Assistant Commissioner for Housing Incentives, NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development
Alexander Tendler, Vice President at Vanbarton Group
Daniel Weisen, Senior Director at Eldridge Capital Management
Topics will Include
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- Land Use Considerations
- Partial Conversions
- Design Considerations in the Conversion Process
- 467-m: Eligibility Considerations
- 467-m: Applying for Tax Exemption Benefits
- Lender Considerations
- Case Studies
Question & Answer Session Conclusions
12:25 pm – 12:30 pm Closing Remarks
Farhana H. Choudhury, Associate Counsel/Chief of Staff for Legal at NYSHCR
Julia A. Solo, Senior Vice President & Counsel at Federated National Land
April 14, 2026 | Permalink | No Comments
April 13, 2026
Incorporating AI Tools Into Your Legal Practice
Image Generated by ChatGPT
I published Advice for Incorporating AI Tools Into Your Legal Practice along with Celia Bigoness and Robert MacKenzie in the National Law Review. It reads,
We have been speaking with many lawyers and law students about using generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools in their legal practice. We are struck by the fact that many of them have not been experimenting much, if at all, with the tools that are available to them – although many acknowledge that their clients are increasingly integrating generative AI into their businesses. We have been integrating a lot of these tools into our own professional lives, and here are some tips to help lawyers and law students get comfortable with AI tools that can help them, in big ways and small, with their job.
Put it on Your Home Screen
Put your preferred AI app (ChatGPT, Claude, etc.) onto your phone’s home screen and be sure to allow it to access your phone’s microphone. You will be surprised by how often you get the urge to ask the app slightly complex questions that a basic web search would not answer. (Hat tip to one of our kids for this idea.)
Start with the Familiar
Trusting the output of an AI tool without having the ability to verify its accuracy is okay if you are choosing a movie to stream tonight. It is not okay if you are using it to provide legal advice to a client. To get comfortable with AI tools, start using it for tasks that you have experience executing and reviewing. One simple way to start: explain a familiar task to the AI tool and ask it for guidance on how you can use it to complete the task.
As you use AI tools in newer areas, you want to review the cited sources in the AI output to confirm that you agree with the AI model’s interpretation of them. Sometimes they are plain wrong, sometimes the AI model misinterprets the cited documents, and sometimes those documents are out-of-date.
When the stakes are greater than your personal entertainment, you need to do a lot of due diligence before you adopt an AI tool’s findings.
Use Multiple Tools
Different AI models are built on different training documents and have different algorithms that they apply to those documents. There is nothing more edifying than running the same queries through a few general AI models and a few specialized ones (like those geared to lawyers, in particular). You will see a range of answers, from non-answers to highly specialized and accurate ones. You will start to become a more sophisticated consumer of the different models, understanding each of their strengths and limitations.
Tell It Your Needs
Most AI tools will tailor their responses to your preferences. In some cases, we created a prompt to instruct the AI tool that responses should be of the type that a lawyer would like to receive—providing sources, explaining its analytical steps, and what it did and did not consider. The AI tool responded that it would be precise, answer “above a lay level,” and “be candid about uncertainty.” This has improved its answers and had the side effect of reducing sycophantic language (“That is a very good question!”).
Use it for Your Pain Points
We all have some routine tasks that we find irritating. They are usually the ones we procrastinate on. For some, it is preparing slide decks. For others, it is drafting certain kinds of emails (unpaid bills, anyone?). Just getting a first draft from the AI tool often helps you to finish the work up. But for some tasks, like preparing presentation slide decks, you can save hours and hours of your time.
We have experimented with both general AI tools and those that specialize in slide deck preparation. They have pros and cons, but are generally very helpful. In all these cases, the AI tool’s time savings are in large part due to the fact that the AI tool is optimizing a task that you are capable of doing yourself. You are able to quickly verify and edit the output.
However, if you were asking the tool to analyze a topic with which you are unfamiliar, or perform a task that you’ve never done before—if you’re learning from scratch—you will still need to go through the painstaking process of checking sources and confirming output.
Play in Vaults
One game-changing use of AI tools is to upload documents to a secure location in the cloud (sometimes referred to as a “vault”) and hone the tool’s focus on only those documents. A transactional lawyer can upload hundreds of documents and quickly identify commonly appearing terms for comparison or inconsistencies among them. A litigator can upload thousands of pages of litigation documents and create a draft chronology of events. Again, the output cannot be taken at face value due to the functional limitations of these tools, but it can provide an extraordinary first draft that can then be verified and edited to the form you prefer. This can be a game-changing use of AI for lawyers, as long as you have verified the vault’s security in advance.
Use it as a Second Set of Eyes
This is a great and scalable tip for those who are skeptical of AI tools. After you have completed a written task, ask an AI tool to critique for clarity, coherence, and accuracy. Even an experienced attorney will get at least a couple of suggestions that will ring true. And of course, you can reject all of the suggestions that you disagree with. This is a great way to see if an AI tool can provide you with real value with very little investment of your time.
Along the same lines, for more advanced experimentation, you can use the AI tool to issue spot and offer counterarguments to your work to complement your own analysis. Again, this is very low stakes because you can reject anything you find wrong-headed or irrelevant. Of course, you need to be careful about sharing privileged information (see vault security above).
Preserve Confidentiality
We have spent more time than many of you would like looking at the Terms of Use of the AI tools we have used. Except for certain tools that are developed for legal work in particular, we believe that the attorney-client privilege can be compromised when using many AI tools because of how the tools use your input information.
We have had students and clients who wanted to use AI transcription tools to compile meeting notes. We have advised them that confidential information can be compromised by such tools and that we do not use them in our practice, at least at this time.
If you begin to use a tool with client-identifying information, be sure to confirm that you are complying with your professional responsibilities to preserve client confidences.
Don’t get Lazy!
We all read the headlines about lawyers who use AI to draft legal documents and do not check to confirm that the work product is correct. Those lawyers rightfully face professional discipline and reputational consequences. We can all say that we would never do that, but a new term has arisen to describe an unthinking reliance on AI: “cognitive offloading.” This offloading occurs when we reduce our own deep research and thinking because of an unhealthy reliance on AI tools.
Every time we complete a substantive task with AI, we need to ask if we have thought through the task as fully as we would have if we did it without the tool. If the answer is no, we need to dig into it again. Cognitive offloading is a particular concern for law students and younger generations of lawyers, who have grown up with technology and tend to be more comfortable using AI tools – and therefore more susceptible to this unthinking reliance.
Conclusion
From our discussions with lawyers in private practice, it is clear that AI tools are being used in the ways we have mentioned above. No doubt, more specialized tools are in development. It’s clear that AI will transform the practice of law in the coming years. Those who are new to AI can use these pointers to begin exploring how AI works. We think they can amplify their effectiveness to the benefit of their clients and themselves, so long as the risks that AI tools pose are thoughtfully addressed.
April 13, 2026 | Permalink | No Comments
