Lawyers Manual - Unified Court System

Hilary Sunghee Seo is Co-Director of the Community Liaison Project at
Sanctuary for Families Center for Battered Women’s Legal Services.
Contributors 433
Sharon Stapel is a Staff Attorney in the Legal Aid Society’s Domestic Violence
Project, which she created in 1998 as a NAPIL (now Equal Justice Works)
Fellow. She specializes in domestic violence in family/matrimonial and public
assistance law, focusing on the effect of these issues on the lesbian, gay,
bisexual and transgender community.
Kim Susser is the Director of the Matrimonial & Family Law Unit at the New
York Legal Assistance Group and also serves as an Adjunct Professor at St.
John’s University School of Law.
Betsy Tsai is a Staff Attorney in the Bronx Community Office of Sanctuary
for Families, Center for Battered Women’s Legal Services. Prior to joining
Sanctuary, she was a litigation associate at Patterson Belknap Webb and Tyler
LLP and a clerk to the Honorable Denny Chin in the Southern District of New
York. Before going to law school, she was a social worker and worked for the
Criminal Court of the City New York on specialized domestic violence courts.
Barbara Weiner is a staff attorney with the Empire Justice Center. Her areas of
practice include immigration law, particularly assistance to immigrant victims
of domestic violence, and public benefits law, with a focus on the eligibility of
immigrants for federal and state public benefit programs.
Wendy Weiser is currently Associate Counsel in the Democracy Program at the
Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. Formerly,
she was a Senior Staff Attorney at Legal Momentum (the new name of NOW
Legal Defense and Education Fund).
Deborah Widiss is a Staff Attorney at Legal Momentum (the new name of NOW
Legal Defense and Education Fund) where she has principal responsibilities for its
Employment and Housing Rights for Survivors of Abuse project.
Jill M. Zuccardy is a family law attorney and consultant. While employed as
the Director of the Child Protection Project at Sanctuary for Families Center for
Battered Women’s Legal Services, she served as trial and appellate co-counsel in
Nicholson v. Williams, the federal class action lawsuit that successfully challenged
New York City’s practices in child welfare cases involving domestic violence.