Lester Brickman

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Lester Brickman

Nationality	American
Alma mater	University of Florida Yale University
Known for	Being a Professor of Law

Lester Brickman is a professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law of the Yeshiva University and a widely-regarded legal scholar.

Brickman is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University. He holds a juris doctor degree from the University of Florida and an LLM degree from Yale Law School.

He teaches contracts, legal ethics and Land Use and Zoning at the Cardozo School of Law and has written extensively on asbestos litigation and tort reform. Brickman has espoused the Early Offer model of allocating contingent fees as a way of reforming the American tort law system.

One noted area in which his reform efforts have already been successful is that of nonrefundable retainers. After he wrote several law review articles and an amicus curiae brief deriding them as illegal, the New York Court of Appeals struck down their use by lawyers in New York State. This holding has been adopted in other states.

Brickman employs a very rigorous socratic method during class meetings, combining a fast-paced banter with students leavened along the way by his idiosyncratic phrases and original anecdotes. Each year he provides his first year classes with a composition called "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" which includes excerpts from course reviews by previous students. The overall effect is intended to scare students into closer reading of case texts (a la the character Professor Kingsfield in The Paper Chase).

He has referred to the school's namesake jurist Benjamin N. Cardozo as so capable that he "could find consideration sixteen times before breakfast without breaking a sweat."