Bios

PETER L. SKOLNIK, ESQ./PRESIDENT AND CHAIR OF BOARD OF DIRECTORS

• Peter L. Skolnik is Counsel at Lowenstein Sandler PC, where he is Chair of the firm's Media and Entertainment Practice. He is also Counsel at J Clark & Associates, LLC. Peter concentrates his litigation practice in the areas of media and entertainment law, First Amendment law, intellectual property litigation and counseling, and complex civil litigation.
• Peter counsels clients and litigates copyright and trademark matters around the country for high tech companies, publishers, broadcasters, authors, literary estates and arts organizations. He represented the Estate of Vladimir Nabokov successfully in a highly celebrated case involving infringement of the copyright to Lolita; successfully defended David Chase, creator of The Sopranos, through litigation and trial concerning early development of the enormously successful television series; and defended filmmaker Jamie Johnson against an invasion of privacy suit arising from his award-winning documentary for HBO, Born Rich, in which Mr. Skolnik appears. Mr. Skolnik also mounted a successful First Amendment pro bono defense of cult expert Rick Ross, in defamation litigation brought by Landmark Education about criticisms of Landmark?s ?Forum? that appear on Ross?s web site.
• Mr. Skolnik's media law practice includes representing media organizations in defamation actions and in actions to obtain access to courtrooms and court records. Mr. Skolnik is co-author of the New Jersey section in the Media Law Resource Center?s Annual 50-State Survey of Privacy and Related Torts. His trademark litigation practice includes enforcement of licensing agreements and restrictive covenants, the application of U.S. law to acts of infringement abroad and other issues. Mr. Skolnik is regularly listed among The Best Lawyers in America in the first amendment law section, and in each annual edition of New Jersey Super Lawyers in the First Amendment/Media Law section, and was profiled in the 2005 inaugural issue of the publication.
• For many years, Mr. Skolnik was an Adjunct Professor of International Copyright Law at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, has been an Adjunct Professor of Publishing Law at New York Law School, and was formerly both a successful theatrical producer/director and seven-term president of a national association of literary agents. Mr. Skolnik is Chair of the New Jersey Media Lawyers Association, and President of the New Jersey Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts.

  DEBORAH J. FENNELLY, ESQ./VICE PRESIDENT

  • Deborah Fennelly is a senior attorney at Legal Services of New Jersey (“LSNJ”), which coordinates the delivery of legal services to the low income New Jersey community. Since joining LSNJ in 1997, she has supervised the LSNJ statewide legal services hotline, represented low-income clients in family law and domestic violence matters, provided training in numerous LSNJ basic legal skills and substantive legal training sessions, and created innovative self-help materials for pro se litigants. She served two terms on the New Jersey Supreme Court Committee on Women and the Courts and as law clerk to the Honorable Reginald Stanton, Assignment Judge of the Superior Court for Morris and Essex Counties, and intern to the Honorable Robert Clifford of the New Jersey Supreme Court. Before joining Legal Services of New Jersey, she was a litigation associate at the New Jersey firms of Riker Danzig, Scherer, Hyland and Perretti and Saiber, LLC.
  • Ms. Fennelly received her law degree from Seton Hall University School of Law in Newark, New Jersey, where she participated in the disability law clinic and was research assistant to former Congressman Peter Rodino. She is a recipient of the Peter Rodino Medal of Excellence, and she also serves on the board of New Jersey AIDS Services in Morristown, New Jersey.
  • A graduate magna cum laude from the Hartt School of Music in West Hartford, Connecticut, with a bachelor of music in voice performance, Ms Fennelly is also a voice-over artist, soloist, and teacher of voice and piano. A member of the National Association of Teachers of Singing, she has performed with numerous Metropolitan area arts organizations including the New Jersey Alliance of Performing Artists, The New Jersey State Opera Company, and Coro Lirico. She also enjoys ballet and jazz dance and landscape and portrait painting.

  SIEGMAR SILBER, ESQ./TREASURER

  • Siegmar "Sig" Silber, Esq., is an attorney/artist. As an attorney, he practices in the intellectual property law firm of Silber & Friedman of Clifton, NJ, and has been in private practice since 1974. Mr. Silber came to the law after 11 years in various engineering and technical marketing positions. He is admitted to practice before the NJ Supreme Court, the US Patent and Trademark Office, and upper courts including the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.
  • Mr. Silber was educated in biochemical engineering at MIT and holds degrees from Columbia University, Yeshiva University Graduate School, and Fordham University Law School. After graduating from Fordham, he trained as a patent attorney at RCA Sarnoff Laboratories in Princeton, NJ. Today, Mr. Silber works in technologies as diverse as building materials and microwave components and manages a sizable trademark portfolio for his clients.
  • As an artist, Mr. Silber began working in pastels and pen and ink in his early fifties. He has studied art at the Montclair Art Museum under master pastelist Catherine Kinkade and is an alumnus of her master class. His work has been in numerous group shows with Ms. Kinkade and her students and has been juried into the Celebration of Lawyers in the Arts shows in 2003 and 2005. His art draws on recurrent themes from his childhood in England and includes numerous landscapes from the Lake District and the Berkshires in Massachusetts. During 2006, Mr. Silber had a one-man show entitled Simple Pleasures, featuring 24 of his works, and during 2008, he had a one-man show at the Paterson Museum entitled Reflect on This!
  • Mr. Silber is counsel to Studio Montclair and the American Society of Botanical Artists.
  • A longtime resident of Paterson, he was counsel to the Great Falls Development Corporation during a 10-year period that saw the restoration of the Rogers Locomotive Works and the relocation of the Paterson Museum. In the same period, he was an officer of and counsel to the Inner City Ensemble, which introduced inner-city kids to the world of dance.
  • Upon the State takeover of the Paterson School System, Mr. Silber was appointed by New Jersey's Commissioner of Education to a four-year term on the Board of Education and chaired the Board's Finance Committee.
  • As a child survivor, Mr. Silber has been active in local and national Holocaust affairs and is a founder and officer of the Kindertransport Association. His biographical/historical account is told in a recently published work entitled Six from Leipzig by Gertrude Dubrovsky, a New Jersey historical researcher. He is a frequent speaker about the Holocaust.
  • Mr. Silber is married to the former Norma Livingstone and has three children - Rachel, David, and Miriam - and eleven grandchildren.

  FRANCES V. BOUCHOUX, ESQ./TREASURER

  • Frances V. Bouchoux is the Associate Dean for Academic and Student Services at Rutgers University School of Law - Newark. She earned a B.A. in history from Rutgers College and a J.D. from Rutgers School of Law - Newark, where she was editor-in-chief of the Rutgers Computer and Technology Law Journal and the Saul Tischler Scholar. After graduation, she was associated with the New York office of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton, where her practice areas included commercial litigation and bankruptcy. She joined the law school in 1993.
  • Her responsibilities include overseeing all student services at the law school and serving as advisor to the Rutgers Computer & Technology Law Journal. Dean Bouchoux serves as vice chair of the New Jersey Supreme Court Committee on Women in the Courts and is a member of the Board of Directors of New Jersey Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts.

  NICHOLAS STEVENS, ESQ./IMMEDIATE PAST PRESIDENT AND CHAIR OF BOARD OF DIRECTORS:

  • Mr. Stevens is a partner and member of the executive committee at the law firm of Starr, Gern, Davison & Rubin, P.C., in Roseland, New Jersey (www.starrgern.com). He chairs the firm's Employment Department and co-chairs the firm's Alternative Dispute Resolution Department. Mr. Stevens has been selected as a "Super Lawyer" from 2005 through 2010.
  • Mr. Stevens concentrates his law practice in the areas of employment law, litigation, and counseling, trade secret and non-competition litigation and counseling, and complex commercial litigation. He practices in federal and state courts and agencies throughout the United States. He also frequently lectures in the areas of employment law and mediation.
  • Mr. Stevens is a mediator and mentor for the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Superior Court of New Jersey. He also mediates private employment disputes, including for Toyota Motor Sales Corporation, as part of its internal ADR program.
  • Mr. Stevens is a founder and the chair of the board of directors for New Jersey Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts, Inc., and serves as president of the Duke Alumni Club of New Jersey, as board chair of the Community Health Law Project (www.chlp.org), which provides pro bono legal services for the disabled, and as a director for the New Jersey Association of Professional Mediators (www.njapm.org).
  • He received his law degree from Emory University School of Law, where he was president of the Student Bar Association and Honor Court Prosecutor, received the Distinguished Service Award, and was selected by the University for inclusion in Who's Who Among Students in American Universities & Colleges. Mr. Stevens graduated from Duke University, where he was president of the Sigma Chi Fraternity and principal guitarist in the Duke University Jazz Ensemble.