Four New Faculty Members to Start in Fall 2023

Four new faculty members will join the Albany Law School community this fall.

Professor Dale Margolin Cecka

Dale Margolin Cecka joins the faculty of Albany Law as an Assistant Professor of Law and Director of the Family Violence Litigation Clinic. Prior to this appointment, Prof. Cecka was a Clinical Professor of Law and the Founder and Director of the Family Law Clinic at the University of Richmond School of Law from 2008-2018. After relocating to Atlanta in 2018, Prof. Cecka served as an Assistant Attorney General for the State of Georgia and as a Senior Staff Attorney for the Cobb County Superior Court, as well in private family law practice. 

From 2004-2006, Prof. Cecka was a Skadden Fellow at the Legal Aid Society of New York, where she advocated for pregnant and parenting teenagers and adolescents aging out of foster care, primarily in the Bronx Family Court. At the end of her Skadden Fellowship, Prof. Cecka was awarded a Clinical Teaching Fellowship at St. John's University School of Law, and served as the Interim Director of the Child Advocacy Clinic, where she represented children in all five boroughs of New York as well as in Nassau Family Court.

Prof. Cecka's scholarship focuses on the constitutional rights of parents and inequities in the child welfare and family court systems.  Her articles have appeared in the Catholic University Law Review, the University of South Carolina Law School and the West Virginia University Law School, among others, and she was a contributor to the book, Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Opinions of the United States Supreme Court, published by the Cambridge University Press in 2016.  Prof. Cecka's articles have been cited in several Supreme Courts across the country. For the past 6 years, Prof. Cecka has also been the lead author of the treatise on Family Law for Virginia (Family Law: Theory, Practice and Forms). Prof Cecka has appeared on National Public Radio and in various podcasts and has published an Op-Ed in The Washington Post related to her advocacy in family law and child welfare.

Prof. Cecka obtained her undergraduate degree from Stanford University in 1999 and her law degree from Columbia University School of Law in 2004, where she was a Harlan Fisk Stone Scholar.

Professor Caitlain Devereaux Lewis ’11

Professor Caitlain Devereaux Lewis joins Albany Law School after almost seven years with the Congressional Research Service (CRS) at the Library of Congress.  At CRS, Lewis first served as a Legislative Attorney covering international trade and intellectual property law for Congress.  She then served as a Supervisory Attorney managing a team of attorneys covering constitutional, health, intellectual property, international trade, tribal, and veterans law.  In addition to authoring numerous reports and white papers for CRS, Lewis also contributed to the Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation, a CRS treatise which provides legal analysis and interpretation of the Constitution based on a review of Supreme Court case law and historical practices.

Prior to joining the legislative branch, Lewis served the federal judiciary for five years, first as Law Clerk to the Honorable Richard K. Eaton ’74 of the U.S. Court of International Trade in New York, NY, and then as Law Clerk to the Honorable Evan J. Wallach of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, D.C.

Lewis graduated from Albany Law School as Salutatorian, where she served as Editor-in-Chief of the Albany Law Review.  Prior to law school, Lewis worked as a librarian and archivist specializing in electronic collections and digitization initiatives, including as Visual Resources Curator at the University at Albany. She has a Bachelor’s degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, a Master of Science from University at Albany and her J.D. from Albany Law School

Professor Jennifer S. Martin

Jennifer S. Martin will join Albany Law School as a Professor of Law on July 1, 2023 from St. Thomas University School of Law.  Professor Martin is a nationally renowned scholar in the area of contract and commercial law. She has published many articles on contract and commercial law remedies, wartime and conflict contracting, consumer rights, and lender liability.  Professor Martin is an elected member of the American Law Institute. She is a co-author of two textbooks, CONTRACTS: A CONTEMPORARY APPROACH (West Academic 3d ed. with Chomsky, Kunz and Schiltz) and LEARNING SALES (West Academic 2d ed. with Chomsky, Kunz and Schiltz). She is also the author of the American Bar Association’s Annual Survey on Sales Law published annually in THE BUSINESS LAWYER. Her distinguished publications are many and include, Contract Remedies and the Myth of the Expectation Measure, 94 TULANE L. REV. (961 2020), Private Law Remedies, Human Rights and Supply Contracts, 68 AMERICAN L. REV. 1781 (2019) and Opportunistic Resales and the Uniform Commercial Code, 2016 ILL. L. REV. 487 (2016). Professor Martin prepares the annual update to COMMERCIAL AND CONSUMER WARRANTIES (Lexis).

Professor Martin graduated from Vanderbilt Law School, and was an Associate with the international practice group of Baker & Botts, L.L.P., practicing in both the Houston and Dallas offices. A member of the Texas and American Bar Associations, Professor Martin was a Principal Attorney for Houston Industries Incorporated (now Reliant Energy), working on power generation transactions domestically and internationally.

Professor Carla Spivack

A proud graduate of Amherst Regional High School, Professor Spivack received her Bachelor’s from Princeton University, her J.D. from New York University School of Law, and her Ph.D from Boston College.  Between earning her BA and going to law school, she spent several years as a community organizer in the Boston area.  Before joining the Albany Law faculty, she taught at Oklahoma City University School of Law since 2005, with wonderful colleagues and students.  She is thrilled to back in the part of the country that feels like home.

Professor Spivack teaches and writes in the areas of Wills, Trusts and Estates, Tax law, and Property law.  She has published articles in many top law reviews, as well as a book about women and money, co-authored a Wills and Trusts casebook, the Wills and Trusts volume of the Developing Professional Skills series, and the Wills and Trusts Gilberts outlines.

Professor Spivack teaches Wills, Trusts and Estates, Estate Planning and Elder Law.  She is passionate about inheritance law and the ways it shapes society and determines its vectors of power and influence along lines of race, class, and gender.  In 2016, she started a regular conference about this topic called Wills, Trusts and Estates Meets Gender, Race and Class.

Professor Spivack's other interests include nineteenth century novels, animals, and cooking.  She's never met a stray dog she didn't try to take home.