Leveraging Your Firm Technology for Social Distance and Accessibility

Alexander Paykin immigrated from Russia at the age of nine. During his family’s travels and while waiting for visa approval to the United States, Alex opened his first business, operating a car wash in the parking lot of a small bar in the town of Santa Marinella, in Italy.

By the time he was 16, Mr. Paykin was already employed full time and developing his own ideas for an IT start-up. Before graduating from college, Alex was already a senior software developer for the IT company he co-founded. Simultaneously, he worked for Pennzoil-Quaker State International, having started off as an entry level technician and within two years, rising to the position of District Trainer, responsible for over a dozen Jiffy Lube locations, including the hiring, training and termination of all employees, as well all customer relations and corporate compliance.

During law school, Mr. Paykin was also working for McCarville Ford as a sales consultant and went back to running Spider International, his IT consulting company. During the summers, he also worked with NYANA and was assistant to the general counsel of a substantial New York medical malpractice insurance company.

Upon graduating from law school, Mr. Paykin has continued in the fields of IT, law and real estate, having since operated two brokerages, three law firms an IT company and a financial consulting company.

Today, Alex operates a successful boutique law firm housed on the 59th floor of the Empire State Building, focused in commercial and real estate matters, while simultaneously operating a boutique real estate brokerage in New York City. He also serves as General Counsel and is a member of the Board of LexConnect, an IT start-up in the legal software field. In total, on any given week, Mr. Paykin provides counsel on various business matters to no less than a dozen companies, a half-dozen cooperative buildings and one or two charities.

Mr. Paykin is very active with the New York State Bar Association, including various volunteer functions, such as being the attorney coach for the Ezra Academy High School Mock Trial Team. He is also the Rotarian advisor to the Kings Park High School Interact Club and a very active Rotarian on both club and district level. Mr. Paykin is responsible for all of the Rotary District IT matters and has been tasked with expanding the district’s technological capacity as well as to expand the Rotary Youth Exchange initiative. In his spare time, Mr. Paykin enjoys to ski, snow-mobile, jet-ski, swim and is currently studying for his pilot’s license.

As an attorney in private practice since 1994, most of Ramon’s work has involved representing corporate defendants, but he also represent certain individuals in civil rights, employment, estate, and other matters. He has worked with property and casualty, health insurance, surety, self-insured, motor-vehicle and maritime companies; in matters involving coverage, loss mitigation, distribution, employment, project take-overs, accident, provider, and beneficiary disputes. Early in his career, he was involved in some of the largest products liability and mass tort actions to be filed in Puerto Rico, that served as precedent to today’s complex litigation rules. Ramón practices before the Commonwealth, U.S. district and bankruptcy courts, and several government agencies.

William Goren is one of the country's foremost authorities on the American with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. For more than 20 years, he has been advising on ADA compliance as both an attorney and professor—of which during his time as a full-time academic at various institutions in Chicago, he won numerous teaching awards and achieved tenure.

With the goal of making the ADA/Rehabilitation Act and related laws understandable so that employers, governmental entities, businesses, and even individuals understand what it means to comply with the ADA/Rehabilitation Act and related laws, Mr. Goren provides consulting, counseling, representation, and training services to higher education institutions, public and private corporations, non-profit organizations, professional sports teams, government entities, and individuals. He also advises legal firms on a wide range of ADA matters. His approach favors prevention as a safeguard to costly litigation.

A licensed attorney in Georgia, Illinois and Texas, Mr. Goren also brings a deep, personal understanding of what it means to have a disability, equipping him with exceptional insight on how the ADA actually works. He is deaf with a congenital bilateral hearing loss of 65–90 decibels, but functions entirely in the hearing world thanks to hearing aids and lip reading. For reasons unrelated to his deafness, he uses voice dictation technology to access the computer.

Mr. Goren is the author of Understanding the Americans with Disabilities Act, Fourth Edition (published by the American Bar Association, 2013). A prolific writer and renowned researcher, Mr. Goren has penned numerous other articles on the rights of persons with disabilities and publishes a blog — an ABA Top 100 Legal Blawg for 2014 — on current topics related to ADA compliance.

Mr. Goren is founder, founding member, and was the first president of the National Association of Attorneys with Disabilities (NAAD). Mr. Goren is a member of the American Bar Association's General Practice and Solo Technology Committee (Vice Chair) and its Labor and Employment/Civil Rights Committee. He is a member of the Technology Committee of the Business Law Section and the Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) Committee of the Labor and Employment Section of the American Bar Association; a member of the Atlanta Bar Association; and a member of the DeKalb County Bar Association. Previously, Mr. Goren has served on the Illinois Standing Committee on Disability Law, the Texas Bar Standing Committee on Disability Issues committee, and was a co-chair of the Civil Rights/Constitutional Law committee of the Chicago Bar Association.

Mr. Goren received his B.A. from Vassar College, his J.D. from the University of San Diego, and his LL.M. in Health Law from DePaul University.