My wife Rose and I were treated to lunch at the Century Club and I got a plaque. The plaque-givers are lawyers, of course, and that's how they talk. I'd never heard of the late Stanley Rosen but learned he was the Dean of Matrimonial Counsel here in Albany.

What I do in contrast, is represent battered women in the Family Courts of Albany, Rensselaer, Schenectady, and Saratoga Counties, doing my best to stick it to their batterers who are known as Respondents. I kick ass, in other words. My women are the Petitioners; the Respondents are all male, who run the gamut from smarmy-mouthed con men to redneck morons to killers-in-the-making.

I prefer the surly fellows on the edge, anger seeping out of most of them in insolent responses to the Family-Court-Judges, who are uniformly women (They're still addressing their "ole ladies" you see). If I'm blessed they're not represented by counsel who'd try to get in my way. But they don't usually have lawyers. Makes it easier for me to provoke them, to stick them like the picador on horseback taunts the bull with the lance. Very unlawyer-like I know. But when they lose it in front of the Judge, I'm well-along to the right verdict. And the ladies, my clients, appear to enjoy the rare spectacle.

Never was in a Family Court till I relocated to Albany from New York City thirteen years ago. Volunteered to take cases from the Domestic Violence Project of the Albany Women's Bar Association, and still do. I find it especially satisfying work, having been a Criminal Trials lawyer with the NYC Legal Aid Society for 18 years, and a New York City Police Lieutenant prior to the lawyering. Gave me first-hand knowledge of the desperation of the women held in domestic servitude by these louts.

In the top photo, I get the plaque from Lydia Kulbida, a TV anchorwoman who grew up in the Bronx, and on my left, Lisa Frisch, Director of the DV Project, who confided to me she liked my style in Family Court as I explained to the audience. In the other photo, the widow Sarah Rosen opined that Stanley would have liked my take on our business as he much preferred being an Albany County Assistant District Attorney in Criminal Court to being head Matrimonial Partner at McNamee, Lochner, Titus & Williams, PC. I could sympathize.