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Brooklyn attorney and former Legal Aid head joins Barket Epstein

September 4, 2018 By Rob Abruzzese, Legal Editor Brooklyn Daily Eagle
Just under a year after he announced his retirement from the Legal Aid Society, Seymour James joins the boutique criminal defense firm Barket Epstein. Photo by David Ayres
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The boutique criminal defense firm formerly known as Barket Epstein & Kearon, LLP, which has an office in the Empire State Building and Garden City, has added two new partners including Brooklynite and former head of the Legal Aid Society Seymour W. James, Jr.

John H. LoTurco, a former prosecutor who was recently named the 2018 Suffolk County Criminal Bar Association Criminal Practitioner of the Year, has also been named partner.

Barket Epstein & Kearon, LLP will now be known as Barket Epstein Kearon Aldea & LoTurco, LLP as the firm also announced a name change and opened a new office in Huntington, Long Island in addition to adding James and LoTurco.

“We came together nearly seven years ago as a boutique criminal defense and civil rights firm with a shared vision that we would provide outstanding representation to anyone charged with or convicted of a crime and for those who have suffered from the excesses of law enforcement, whether having been wrongly convicted or been the victim of excessive force by police and today we build on that vision,” said founding partner Bruce Barket. “We have a diverse, compassionate and driven team of criminal, civil and appellate attorneys from Manhattan to Montauk.”

James is the former attorney-in-chief of the Legal Aid Society who announced his retirement nearly a year ago. He was also NYS Bar Association president from 2012 to 2013.

“Seymour James had a long and storied career at The Legal Aid Society of New York City and is a legend in criminal law in New York,” Barket said. “His contributions to the law and to the countless men, women and families he has helped over his more than 40 years at Legal Aid are unparalleled. We are honored he is spending the next phase of his legal career with us.”

James graduated from Brown University and Boston University School of Law and began working at the Legal Aid Society as a staff attorney in Brooklyn in the 1970s. He was named attorney-in-charge of criminal defense in 2005 and attorney-in-chief in 2014. He received the Lifetime Achievement award from the NYS Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers this year and from the New York Law Journal in 2016.

“I am delighted to join Barket Epstein, a firm I have admired for its superior advocacy and whose lawyers enjoy a stellar reputation for vigorously asserting and protecting the rights of their clients.”

 

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