Lecturer Bios
Ronald C. Minkoff, Esq.
Ronald C. Minkoff is a partner in the Litigation Group and Head of the Professional Responsibility Group. Mr. Minkoff is also one of New York State’s leading practitioners in the field of attorney ethics and professional responsibility, representing attorneys in a wide variety of matters including law firm partnership disputes, disciplinary cases, legal fee disputes and legal malpractice and professional liability cases on behalf of both plaintiffs and defendants. He also provides ethics opinions and advice to a wide variety of law firm clients.
Mr. Minkoff is a member of several Bar Ethics Committees, including the Committee on Standards of Attorney Conduct (COSAC) and the Committee on Professional Discipline of the New York State Bar Association. He is also the Chair of the Task Force on Professionalism of the New York County Lawyers Association, a former member of the American Bar Association Standing Committee on Professionalism, and a past President of the Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers. He is a member of the Media Law Resource Center (MLRC) ethics committee and has written extensively for the New York Professional Responsibility Report, The Professional Lawyer, The New York Law Journal, and other publications. Mr. Minkoff is an Adjunct Professor of Professional Responsibility at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. He has also served as an Adjunct Professor at New York University School of Law, Fordham Law School, and Brooklyn Law School. He is a frequent lecturer on the law of lawyering.
In addition, Mr. Minkoff represents businesses and individual professionals and executives in a wide variety of commercial litigation, including business break-ups, securities lawsuits, and domestic and international trade disputes. He represents several law firm partners in partnership disputes. And he represents an internationally known petrochemist in an oil and gas venture dispute. Mr. Minkoff was recently appointed to the Advisory Committee of the Commercial Division of the Supreme Court, New York County and was a member of Chief Judge Lippman’s Task Force on Commercial Litigation in the 21st Century. He is also a member of the Council on Judicial Administration of the New York City Bar Association.
Mr. Minkoff is a graduate of Columbia Law School (JD, 1980). He was an attorney at the Nassau County Legal Aid Society (1980-83), and was associated with Obermaier Morvillo & Abramowitz, P.C. (1983-85) and Owen & Fennell (1985-87). Mr. Minkoff was a member of Fennell & Minkoff (1987-94) and Beldock Levine & Hoffman (1994-2001) before joining Frankfurt Kurnit.
Representative cases: Grynberg v. BP Explorations Operating Co. Ltd. 92 A.D.3d 547 938 N.Y.S.2d 439 (2012); Frauzblau v. Cassin and Cassin LLP Index: 105949/10 Supreme Court New York County (2010); Carl v. Cohen and Greenberg Traurig, LLP 23 Misc.3d 1110(A) 886 N.Y.S.2d 66 (2009); Conopco, Inc. v. Wein, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 46945 (S.D.N.Y. 2007); Trepel v. Dippold, 2006 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 78050 (S.D.N.Y. 2006); Goetz v. Volpe and R & L Leasing, LLC, 11 Misc.3d 632, 812 N.Y.S.2d 294 (2006).
Nicole I. Hyland, Esq.
Nicole Hyland is a partner in the Litigation Group and Professional Responsibility Group at Frankfurt Kurnit. Her practice focuses primarily on legal ethics, professional responsibility, and legal malpractice.
Ms. Hyland counsels attorneys and law firms on conflicts of interest, legal fee disputes, escrow issues, disqualification motions, multijurisdictional law practice, business transactions with clients, lateral transitions, law firm formation and break-ups, advertising and social media use, and other professional responsibility issues. Ms. Hyland also represents defendants and plaintiffs in legal malpractice and breach of fiduciary duty disputes.
In addition to her legal ethics and professional responsibility practice, Ms. Hyland has an active litigation practice, focusing on art, literature, and entertainment industry disputes. She handles copyright, trademark, right of publicity, and defamation claims, as well as disputes over financing, production, distribution, and talent agreements. She counsels art, literature, and entertainment industry clients on content issues, including copyright, trademark, right of publicity, television formatting rights, privacy, defamation, and fair use.
Ms. Hyland is Chair of the Committee on Professional Ethics of the New York City Bar Association (NYCBA). In that role, she oversees the City Bar’s ethics hotline, which provides ethical guidance to lawyers from all over New York State. She also oversees the drafting of informal and formal ethics opinions on a variety of topics, including: non-refundable flat fee arrangements, the use of Professional Employer Organizations by law firms, the ethics of using a virtual law office, ethical guidelines for accepting credit cards, and business arrangements between law firms and nonlegal organizations.
Ms. Hyland serves as Co-Chair for the Ethics Committees of the Women’s Bar Association of the State of New York (WBASNY) and the New York Women’s Bar Association (NYWBA) – WBASNY’s New York City chapter. For the past two years she has hosted the NYWBA annual meeting at Frankfurt Kurnit followed by an Ethics CLE program for NYWBA members and attendees.
Ms. Hyland serves on the Board of the Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers (APRL) and is a member of the New York State Bar Association Committee for Standards on Attorney Conduct (COSAC). She is also a member of the American Bar Association’s Center for Professional Responsibility.
Ms. Hyland writes and lectures frequently on legal ethics and professional responsibility issues. She recently joined Professor Roy Simon as a co-author on his seminal treatise: Simon’s New York Rules of Professional Conduct Annotated (2015 ed.). She is on the editorial board of the New York Legal Ethics Reporter and contributes to the Legal Ethics Forum blog.
Follow Nicole on Twitter @NiHyland, connect with her on LinkedIn, “Like” her Facebook page, or view her documents on JD Supra.
Amelia K. Brankov, Esq.
Amelia K. Brankov is counsel to the Litigation Group and Art Group at Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz, focusing on commercial dispute resolution, intellectual property law and art law.
Ms. Brankov represents businesses and executives in the advertising, art, entertainment, fashion and media industries, resolving disputes over copyrights, trademarks, motion picture rights, right of publicity claims and false advertising claims. She also represents high-profile corporate clients in the financial and insurance industries.
Ms. Brankov has authored articles and lectured on a number of dispute resolution and intellectual property topics, including copyright issues, litigation involving visual art, the drafting of arbitration clauses and the use of expert witnesses at trial. She is an Editor of Entertainment Law Matters, a Frankfurt Kurnit blog about disputes and developments in the film, television, publishing, theatre, music, art, gaming, and fashion industries.
Ms. Brankov is a member of the Committee on Fine Arts of the New York State Bar Association's Entertainment, Arts and Sports Law Section, MLRC's Litigation Committee, New York City Bar’s Women in the Courts Task Force and the Acquisitions Committee of the Guggenheim Museum’s Young Collectors Council. She also serves as an arbitrator in New York City Civil Court matters and is a mediator.
Prior to joining Frankfurt Kurnit, Ms. Brankov was an associate with Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP, where she represented clients in commercial litigation and arbitration. She was also active in pro bono matters and served as lead counsel in a trial where her client obtained political asylum from Cameroon.
Ms. Brankov received her JD with honors from the University of Texas School of Law (2002), where she was a member of the Texas Law Review and Order of the Coif. She also has an LLM degree with first-class distinction from the University of Cambridge, Clare Hall (2006). She holds a BA in Government from the University of Texas (1999, highest honors).
Ms. Brankov is admitted to practice in New York and Texas state courts and federal courts in the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York and in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.
Richard M. Maltz, Esq.
Richard M. Maltz is counsel to our Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility Group and he has more
than 23 years of experience in the professional responsibility field. He represents lawyers in disciplinary
matters and lawyers and law firms in partnership disputes. He also handles litigation involving
professional responsibility issues, fee disputes, law firm disputes, disqualification, sanctions, and
problems in the admission process for law graduates. He was recently recognized by Best Lawyers in
America as one of the top attorneys in his field.
Mr. Maltz served two years as First Deputy Chief Counsel (1998-2000) and nine years as Deputy Chief
Counsel (1989-1998) for the Departmental Disciplinary Committee for the Appellate Division, First
Judicial Department. Prior to joining the Committee, Mr. Maltz handled both criminal and civil litigation.
Currently, Mr. Maltz is a member of the New York State Bar Committee on Professional Discipline and
the New York City Bar Professional Responsibility Committee. He was creator and Chair of the New York
State Trial Lawyer’s Ethics Committee.
Mr. Maltz is a former Chair of the Professional Responsibility Committee of the New York City Bar
(2002-2005) and former Chair and then Co-Chair of the Ethics Committee of the Westchester County
Bar Association. He served as a member of the New York County Lawyers’ Ethics Institute and was
appointed to the New York State Bar Advertising Task Force. He was also former Chair of the Briarcliff
Manor Ethics Board, as well as a former Referee for the Judicial Conduct Commission.
Mr. Maltz has been certified to teach an ethics CLE course by the New York State Continuing Legal
Education Board and he lectures often on disciplinary and ethical issues for New York State, City, and
County Bar associations and for private law firms. He has taught professional responsibility at Benjamin
N. Cardozo School of Law, and has published articles in the New York Law Journal, New York State Bar
Journal, and Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics. He has also acted as an ethics expert.
Tyler Maulsby, Esq.
Tyler Maulsby is an associate in the Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility and Litigation Groups of Frankfurt Kurnit.
His practice focuses on counseling and litigation matters in areas including: commercial disputes, legal malpractice, criminal defense, conflicts of interest, lateral transitions, disqualification motions, unauthorized practice of law, and professional discipline.
Mr. Maulsby currently serves as Secretary of the Committee on Professional Ethics of the New York City Bar Association and is a member of the Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers. He is also a regular contributor to the New York Legal Ethics Reporter.
Prior to joining Frankfurt Kurnit, Mr. Maulsby was a criminal defense attorney at The Bronx Defenders, a holistic public defender office in the South Bronx. While at The Bronx Defenders, Mr. Maulsby acted as lead counsel in numerous hearings, jury and bench trials.
He is admitted to practice in New York state courts and federal courts in the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York.
Jeffrey A. Jannuzzo, Esq.
Jeffrey A. Jannuzzo is a solo practitioner in New York, who started off defending legal malpractice cases, but then re-aligned his practice in accordance with truth, justice, and the American way, and moved over to suing law firms whose sloppiness or perfidy caused harm to their clients. He now represents clients against their former law firms in high-stakes malpractice cases. Jeff measures his success by the caliber of the firms that are hired to oppose him: Williams & Connolly LLP, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP, Cravath Swaine & Moore LLP, and so forth.
In plaintiff-side malpractice cases, the largest amount at issue was in nine figures for patent law malpractice; the case was settled confidentially. Leviton v. Greenberg Traurig. The decision of the Court of Appeals in Melcher v. Greenberg Traurig regarding claims for attorney deceit was a case of first impression, and reached back to ancient English law of the 1200's to arrive at its result. On the defense side, the Court of Appeals decision in Darby v. Darby v. VSI protecting lawyers against a certain type of malpractice claim has been cited in case law 106 times, and in secondary sources 114 times. Of his 30 reported NY appellate cases, Jeff has won 25, tied two, and lost three. He has been named a “Super Lawyer,” which means he can now get on any subway in New York, if he has a metrocard.
In another life, in the late 1980’s, Jeff lived and practiced law in Saudi Arabia, where he was among other things outside counsel to the U.S. government on military construction litigation. His op-ed essay in the Wall Street Journal shortly after the end of the first Gulf War was coincidentally the template of UN Security Council Resolution 687, which created the UN commission for Gulf War claims.
Jeff is a 1976 graduate of Yale Law School.
Robert L. Denby, Esq.
Robert Denby is Senior Vice-President Loss Prevention with Attorneys’ Liability Assurance Society, Inc. (ALAS), based in Chicago. In that capacity, he heads the Loss Prevention department, a group of 11 lawyers who spend their time writing, lecturing, and consulting about matters of professional responsibility, ethics, and claims avoidance.
He graduated from the University of Chicago with honors in 1986, and then received his J.D. with honors from the University of Michigan in 1989. Upon graduation, he joined the Chicago law firm of Jenner & Block. He remained there until 2000, becoming a partner in the litigation group in 1997.
At Jenner & Block, Bob concentrated on trial practice both in complex civil and criminal matters. In 2000, Bob joined the in-house law department at Ameritech Corporation, now part of AT&T. He stayed there for approximately three years, and for the last year ran the Ameritech litigation department, which had a staff of 25 and oversaw an extremely active litigation docket. He joined ALAS in December 2002.
