Law, literature and leadership: Alum excels in multifaceted career
Gary Muldoon ’73, lawyer, writer, adjunct professor, and most recently elected town justice in Perinton, N.Y., gravitated toward classic literature at Skidmore, even as he knew he wanted to become a lawyer.
“Acquiring a broad education — and gaining an appreciation for the written and spoken
word in particular — was a huge takeaway from my formal education,” Muldoon says.
Muldoon, who earned his law degree from University at Buffalo, started his career as an attorney for AmeriCorps VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America). He worked in various other capacities as an assistant public defender, Legal Services attorney, and law clerk in city and county courts before he went into private practice. He also served for eight years on the Rochester City Council.
For more than 30 years, Muldoon has focused on criminal and family law. He has authored numerous books, including “Handling a Criminal Case in New York” (published annually since 1994), “Trial Handbook for New York Lawyers,” “The Education of a Lawyer,” and, most recently, “Family Law Slanguage of New York.”
Muldoon, who grew up in Orchard Park, N.Y., attended Skidmore at a time when the College instituted a 4-1-4 curriculum to encourage students to explore courses outside their majors. Students took four traditional courses in the fall and spring and one elective course for four weeks in January.
The curriculum, combined with exchange agreements with other colleges, also enabled Skidmore to slowly transform itself from an all-women’s college to a permanent coeducational institution, with the first male students graduating in the early 1970s. Muldoon, who began as a freshman at St. Lawrence University, took a government course at Skidmore and stayed on to complete his degree in government and history.
His favorite classes at Skidmore were ones centered on the rise of the novel and on Shakespeare. He also remembers Alan Brody’s film class, which Muldoon would use years later as a model for a course he developed that combines law, film, and literature. He has taught the class at the undergraduate and law school levels.
“The legal profession needs diversity in many ways, as it is a profession of ever-changing ideas,” Muldoon says. “It’s also important for college to instill in its graduates the desire to continue learning, both in their field and outside it.”
