Part-Time
Evening
Program

Part-Time Evening Program at Fordham Law

For more than 100 years, Fordham Law’s part-time evening program has been welcoming students who want to pursue the best possible legal education while continuing to work and/or tend to family responsibilities. These students enrich our Lincoln Center campus with their unique perspectives and life experiences. Before joining Fordham Law, for instance, Maureen Zakowski ’20, M.D., spent two decades as a pathologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, diagnosing lung cancer and other cancers on small tumor samples obtained through minimally invasive procedures. Throughout her career, she says, she has seen numerous ways in which law and medicine constantly crossed paths, and she came to Fordham Law School to be able to speak both languages. “I have a different perspective than most students. I was used to asking the questions, not answering them!”

Prior to enrolling at Fordham as an evening student, Casey Adams ’19 worked for both of Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns—in 2008 as a field organizer in Clay County, Florida, and in 2012 as the regional field director in Nevada. He then went on to work in New York City government and at the City’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection. His commitment to public service is what sparked his interest in pursuing a law degree.

“I wanted to get a better understanding of the junction point between the political work I had been doing and the actual consequences of the legislation,” he says. “The school does a great job at helping evening students feel that they are an integral part of the community. I studied the law at night, and I participated in the actual process of lawmaking during the day.”

Adams credits the support he received from his professors for his success. “They knew I had a unique schedule,” he says. That schedule did not hold him back. On the day he graduated, Adams, an associate editor of the Fordham Law Review, was honored with a Law360 Burton Award for Distinguished Legal Writing, then went on to clerk for three different judges.

Native New Yorker Akilah Browne ’19, selected Fordham Law School to acquire the legal skills necessary to fight for a cause that she is deeply passionate about: housing justice. As part of her two-year Skadden fellowship, Browne worked with New Economy Project, a nonprofit, to advocate for affordable housing in low-income communities such as the South Bronx and Washington Heights.

Browne’s passion for law stems from personal experience. Her father was evicted from their long-time family apartment along with the other tenants in the building. At the time, Browne was working at Cleary Gottlieb, an international law firm in New York City, managing their pro bono cases. “I didn’t ask enough questions—I don’t think anyone asked enough questions,” Browne says of what happened to her family home. “No one caught on until it was too late.”

Quickly, though, Browne turned to her pro bono network for guidance, helping her father get a settlement from the landlord. She also enrolled at Fordham Law as an evening student, working with clinical associate professor Brian Glick. Professor Glick founded the Community Economic Development (CED) Clinic to fight for social justice in low-income communities and for low-wage workers. “I came to him and said, ‘I’m interested in affordable-housing work; is it possible for me to do this through the clinic?’ He connected me with mentors outside the school and enabled me to bring work directly into the clinic,” says Browne. “My friends have lost all hope in the city and some have chosen to leave. I’ve turned my frustration into action.”