My name is Victoria Esposito.

I'm a new assistant professor of law here at Albany Law School.

Specifically, I teach Introduction to lawyering.

I came here from the Legal Aid Society of northeastern New York, where I served as the advocacy director for the last six years that I was there.

Basically what my job was was to identify systemic issues that could affect a large number of low income people, and we tried to litigate or advocate in other ways to solve them, rather than hoping that every single person affected by that issue came toward through our door.

Before that, I worked as a staff and senior attorney doing disability, landlord tenant work, foreclosure defense, little bit of family law, really the whole panoply of poverty law.

And before that, I was a prosecutor in St Lawrence County.

When this opportunity opened up, it felt like a really good chance to blend what I had done previously with my experience at Legal Aid, a lot of which was research and writing, and a lot of which was also working with new attorneys and helping them understand how to write.

I really love the chance to build relationships with the students. It's lawyering is a small class. It's a two semester class, and it gives me the chance to spend a lot of one on one time with them as we record.

This orientation is just starting, and I'm seeing some of my last year students.

They're coming in to give me a hug and tell me how much the class helped them last year, or to tell me about their internships.

Or did you stop by and grab a cup of coffee?

And I'm really, really grateful to be able to build those relationships.

It will never get old.

I mean, there are days it makes me want to tear up a little bit, especially if it's someone that I know really had to put in a lot of work there.

I'm just, I'm proud of the students, and I'm so happy that they take the moment to come in and say those words when you ask if there's one specific moment, when I think about one specific moment, I think of a montage.

You know, it's like in a movie.

I'm sorry I wouldn't come up with one if I could. But one thing that I heard, actually, from a colleague recently is that a number of the students who have applied to be pro bono scholars this year.

So these are students who do all their coursework in three years, take the bar early and then spend their last semester in practice at a public interest firm.

And a lot of the students who applied talked about used me as a reference, or talked about how I inspired them to work at public interest and that meant so much to me, so much.

One thing I'm looking forward to this semester is that, for the first time, I actually am synchronizing my problem for my lawyering class with one of the doctrinal professors.

So let me unpack that a little bit. In lawyering, what we do is we give the students a fact, a set of facts.

Early on, I actually have my students do a mock client interview so they can understand what that's like.

And they write a memo based on that first semester, they do more papers and an appellate brief based on that same problem second semester.

So they will be living with this problem for a long time.

This year, for the first time, I went to a friend of mine who teaches a specific area, and we coordinated on that problem so that they'll be working with the facts, but also learning the principles of the law in a separate class at the same time that I'm excited about that's something I've wanted to do for some time, and this is the first year we've actually pulled it together.

Spring, because spring is you can feel the promise of everything.

It's a transitional season, but you're transitioning to when things are opening up.

My biggest fear is wasting time, not not pulling everything out of this lifetime that I can my ideal vacation is someplace warm and sunny and Mediterranean.

Probably the best vacation my husband and I have ever taken is to southern Spain, but I'm very much looking at my family's Italian.

I'm very much looking forward to getting back to Italy in the next little while as well. You outside of work, I love to read. I love to learn languages.

I was actually a Russian major undergrad English and Russian with a concentration in Soviet studies.

So here I am, um, I love to travel and I knit all.

Though not as regularly as I would like to Dorothy Parker.

And Dorothy Parker is Dorothy Parker was a really well known theater critic, book reviewer, poet, short story writer in the 1930s in New York City.

I've been a huge fan of her since I was 13 years old.

I recently made a point of having drinks at the Algonquin Hotel in New York, because that's where she was known to hang out.

And I used to write book reviews back in a previous Life, and she was very much my role model.

Challenges and Opportunities

Playlist (5)

Everyday Heroes/Student Support

Women’s Leadership Program

Challenges and Opportunities

Meet Bria Barnes

The Alumni Network