Brian Farkas

Brian Farkas ’10 was elected to Vassar’s Board of Trustees in 2018. He also serves as Vice President of the Alumnae/i Association.

Brian is an attorney at Arent Fox LLP where he focuses his practice on complex commercial litigation. He represents clients in state and federal court, as well as in arbitration and mediation proceedings. Before joining Arent Fox, he served as a law clerk to a federal judge in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, and an associate at a midsize litigation firm. Each year from 2021–2016, he has been named a “Rising Star” by Super Lawyers for Business Litigation.

Outside of his law practice, Brian is passionate about higher education. He is an adjunct professor at the City University of New York (CUNY), where he teaches undergraduate courses on American law, negotiation, and conflict resolution. In alternating semesters, Brian is also an adjunct professor at Cardozo Law School and Brooklyn Law School, where he teaches courses on arbitration and mediation.

His legal scholarship has appeared in numerous publications, including the Harvard Negotiation Law Review, NYU Journal of Law & Business, Lewis & Clark Law Review, Dispute Resolution Journal, and the Northeastern Law Journal.

Brian earned his MPA from New York University’s Wagner Graduate School of Public Service and his JD from Cardozo School of Law. During law school, Brian was Editor-in-Chief of the Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution, an academic journal dedicated to arbitration, negotiation, and mediation scholarship. He was awarded the Andrew S. Zucker Award for Academic Excellence.

Additionally, Brian serves as a pro bono court mediator in Manhattan Civil Court and Brooklyn Small Claims Court, where he has mediated over 100 cases, helping the parties to achieve compromise and resolution outside of litigation.

Brian is a member of the New York City Bar Association and the American Bar Association. At the New York City Bar Association, he chairs the New Lawyer Institute, which plans career development programming and mentoring to law students and recent graduates.

At Vassar, Brian served as Editor-in-Chief of The Miscellany News, and wrote a book about the newspaper’s history entitled “Covering the Campus: A History of The Miscellany News at Vassar College.” He also served as Vice President of the student government and Co-Chair of the Senior Class Gift.