'Judge School' Earns Praise for Setting, Relevant Courses  By MARK FASS Published: October 14, 2004 LAST WEDNESDAY, Judge Robert Keating, dean of the New York State Judicial Institute, stood on the curb in front of the institute waiting for a ride. The first car to pull up was not the one he expected, but rather a lost delivery man, carrying a bag of Chinese food, talking into a cell phone and in desperate need of assistance. Judge Keating reached out for the phone. "Here, let me talk to him," he told the delivery man. "Where are you at?" he asked the caller. "Uh, huh. OK. The library? OK, got it." A moment later, after the judge had pantomimed the route, the delivery man was on his way. Even when biding his time on the edge of a parking lot, Judge Keating lives up to his reputation as a hands-on and outgoing administrator. And a little more than two years after he took the helm of the New York State Judicial Institute, Judge Keating's leadership has helped the "judge school," as the institute is widely known, to garner rave reviews. "It's awesome," said Judge Jane Pearl, who supervises Kings and Richmond County Family Courts and has attended upwards of 20 programs. "By building a facility and environment that focuses on training, it makes it more coherent." The institute is "manifestly more conducive to learning. It has all the resources you need to conduct a smooth and seamless training," added Valerie Raine, a director at the Center for Court Innovation and a frequent instructor at the institute. Chief Administrative Judge Jonathan Lippman, who played a significant role in the school's creation, said he believes Judge Keating is responsible for the institute's strong reputation within the judiciary. "Bob, brick by brick, program by program, built it," said Judge Lippman. "And the team he has built at the institute has put the meat, bones and flesh on the program." Prior to the establishment of the institute-- the nation's first and so far only state-run facility dedicated to judicial education --- New York's 1,400-plus state judges fulfilled their annual 24-credit continuing education requirement by attending programs held in cramped courtrooms or claustrophobic conference rooms across the state. "You go to these hotels with low ceilings, they're dark, there's no light, people are too hot, too cold," complained Ms. Raine. "Before we had the institute, we had these ad hoc, sporadic, scattered, educational efforts with no real thread to hold it together," said Judge Lippman. "It was more a potpourri. It never gave judges a sense that there was a cohesion to it, that it was of the highest priority." The institute's early promoters, such as Judge Lippman and Chief Judge Judith S. Kaye, argued that a centralized, academic setting could provide that missing cohesion. Since it opened in May 2003, the institute has provided more than 5,000 days of training for judges and more than 8,500 days for other legal professionals, such as court personnel and attorneys. The school offers 10 to 15 programs monthly, which attract from 10 to 200 attendees each. It fields a staff of 11, and operates on an annual budget of $1.76 million. Law School Environment Situated on the edge of the tree-lined, White Plains campus of Pace Law School, the building features a stone and granite exterior and a light-wood interior. The design, developed by Judge Keating and Chief Judge Kaye, along with officials from Pace University and architect Eric Kaeyer among others, combined the stateliness of a courtroom with the collegiality of a classroom, according to Mr. Kaeyer. The institute adjoins the law school's Preston Hall, and with two conference rooms, three classrooms and a 165-seat auditorium with stadium seating, it looks like a law school, which was precisely the point. "Everyone who's been here has been in college and law school, and you go right back to [that feeling]," said Peter Passidomo, the state's chief Family Court magistrate. "It's a classroom. It looks like a big lecture hall." Mr. Passidomo, who has led programs on child support and custody at the institute, said the environment has a significant effect on the quality of the training. "The first question you ask everywhere else is, 'What are the limitations?'" he said. For example, will the hotel be equipped for PowerPoint presentations? Will the sound system work? Will there be desks or tables, so that the judges can take notes? But at the institute, "as an instructor, you feel like you have to raise the bar for yourself," said Mr. Passidomo. "You feel like a law school professor." Indeed, many of the instructors are professors. In recent weeks, New York University School of Law professor Helen S. Scott led a program on financial transactions, for example, and Fordham Law School's Constantine Katsoris discussed the interpretation of financial statements. The institute also seeks out judges and attorneys who have written about or participated in significant litigation. A recent workshop on DNA and wrongful convictions, for example, featured Peter Neufeld and Barry Scheck, the co-founders of The Innocence Project at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, and District Attorney Richard A. Brown of Queens. Relevant Courses Judge Keating -- a former Legal Aid attorney, prosecutor in the Brooklyn district attorney's office, and court of claims, criminal and administrative judge -- met with countless judicial organizations to discuss the concept of the institute and incorporated the conversations into the plan, adding a wide range of clinical, evidentiary and scientific programs. The institute now offers courses on problem-solving courts and specialized areas of law, as well as programs for new judges and for those switching courts. "He made the institute relevant to judges' everyday work," said Judge Lippman. "To me, and maybe I'm parochial in this regard, I give [the institute] an A, an A-plus." Judge Keating presents a more modest front. While the school is doing better than expected in terms of course programming, attendance and number of people reached, he said, it is "not where we want to be" regarding technology and Web-based programming. He said he hopes the institute's courses will be available online, both live and archived, within the next six months. He also intends to develop the school as an international site for judicial training and to set up programs in conjunction with neighboring states, he said. But that's it for now. "Let's take care of what we've got on the plate," said the dean.