One of New York City's top litigators, a Harvard and Oxford graduate with decades of government experience, will join the NYC Department of Correction as its general counsel.
Paul Shechtman will join the DOC as deputy commissioner of legal matters, the city's jail system said Tuesday.
Shechtman is a former chief of appeals and chief of the criminal division for the Manhattan U.S. Attorney's Office. He also served as counsel to the Manhattan DA's office and spent two years as the state's director of criminal justice in the Pataki administration. He was chair of the State Ethics Commission and is a member of the New York Sentencing Commission.
Earlier in his career, Shechtman was a clerk to Chief Justice Warren Burger, and most recently, he has been in private practice and lecturing at Columbia Law School. City & State ranked him 33rd on their 2022 "Law Power 100" list.
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"He has dedicated his career to public service, especially in the field of criminal justice and I look forward to utilizing his decades of experience as we work to transform this department," DOC Commissioner Louis Molina said in a statement.
Shechtman joins the DOC at a time of intense legal challenges for the department, with the threat of a federal takeover of Rikers looming unless reforms can be implemented. The department is also under fire for an incessant stream of inmate deaths in custody -- 11 so far this year after 15 last year.
