Village of East Hills resident Steven J. Eisman, a partner at the law firm Abrams Fensterman in Lake Success and a vice chairman to the Nassau County Republican Committee, has been named the president-elect of the Nassau County Bar Association.
Eisman will assume the position in June 2015 and serve for one year, presiding over the bar association’s 30-member board of directors and various committees and countywide legal service programs and charitable efforts.
“It feels good to have gotten here. I know we have a lot of work ahead of us,” he said Friday. “Each year has been a fair amount of work.”
Eisman was admitted to the bar in 1980 and has served on the Nassau County Bar Association’s executive board for the last four years. He has spent the last 12 years with Abrams Fensterman.
“It’s my job now to bring the bench and bar together as often as possible,” he said. “It’s non-stop. Every area of law you can think of, we have a committee on it.”
Eisman earned his bachelor’s degree from C.W. Post – where he also played lacrosse – in 1976, and went on to graduate from St. John’s University’s School of Law in 1979. He grew up in Levittown and attended the now-closed Levittown Memorial High School.
He began his career in criminal defense and later began practicing matrimonial law, handling divorce settlements, trials and prenuptial agreements.
“I like being in a position where you can help people get to the next episode and chapter in their life, however they want to get there,” he said. “People used to get married at 21, and now it’s more like 30 or 35, so people have more significant assets when they get married and it’s important. They may have children from a first marriage to consider, or they’ve already gone through a bad divorce.”
“I like working with people,” he said. “The fascinating thing about being a divorce lawyer is that you learn so many different kinds of businesses. I have to be an expert in whatever business my client or my client’s spouse is in. It’s certainly a stressful practice. You’re dealing with people’s lives.”
Eisman in the early 1990s served as lieutenant governor of the New York District Kiwanis International and has served as its counsel for the last two decades.
He is a lifetime member of the Education and Assistance Corporation; a past president of the Jewish Lawyers Association of Nassau County; a past president of the Nassau chapter of the St. John’s Law Alumni Association; a founding member of the Nassau County Firefighters Museum; a fellow of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers; and for the last eight years was a member of the Attorney Grievance Committee for New York’s 10th Judicial District.
He also currently serves as a member of the matrimonial special masters panel in Nassau County, is on the St. John’s Law School’s alumni board and is on the Matrimonial Practice Advisory and Rules Committee set up by the Chief Administrative Justice of the State of New York, a new state-wide committee comprised of 30 lawyers and judges.
“And I also like to play golf,” he said. “I’m not that good, but I enjoy it.”
