After 21 years as a private practitioner/litigator and eight runs for public office (five of which were for judicial office), I was finally elected to the Supreme Court of the State of New York on my ninth try in 1998. For the next nearly 10 years, I had the privilege of serving as a trial justice in the Matrimonial Part and mostly in the Commercial Division. The last 13 years of my tenure as a judge were spent as an Associate Justice of the Appellate Division for the Second Judicial Department—the busiest appellate court in New York, the United States and, perhaps even, the world.

It was in the Appellate Division that I was exposed to, and handled, every variety of case—civil, administrative, and criminal. I learned to be collaborative with colleagues who were intellectually gifted and agile, as well as hard-working. Most significantly, I learned how to fairly apply the law while being faithful to precedent.