Lecturer Bios
Robin Bernstein
Robin Bernstein is the Deputy General Counsel to the Rent Stabilization Association. Prior to her current position, Ms. Bernstein served as inhouse General Counsel to a major New York City property owner, and was in private practice in the areas of landlord/tenant and real estate litigation and transactions. Ms. Bernstein has coordinated and co authored materials for numerous RSA seminars including: Property Insurance for Apartment Building Owners Learning from Sandy, Managing Rent Regulated Property in New York City series, and The City’s New Energy laws series. Ms.
Bernstein is a member of the New York City Bar Association, The New York State Bar Association, the New York County Lawyers’ Association and the Association of Corporate Counsel. She has served on the Housing Court and Housing Court Public Projects Committees of the New York Bar Association. She has also served on the New York Bar Association Judiciary Committee for several terms. Prior to the implementation of the Housing Court Resource Centers, Ms. Bernstein supervised RSA staff located in the court houses that assisted unrepresented small property owners. The
written owners’ materials now distributed in the Resource Centers were modeled on documents drafted by RSA. She is a certified member of the Volunteer Lawyers Program of the Housing
Part of the Civil Court of the City of New York. She served on the New York City Hoarding Task Force, and the City DRIE Board. Ms. Bernstein has worked with City officials, NYSERDA, private consultants, lenders, Con Edison and National Grid to educate RSA members on how to comply with the City’s new energy laws.
Mitchell L. Posilkin, Esq.
Mitchell Posilkin is the General Counsel of the Rent Stabilization Association, a trade association that represents approximately 25,000 owners and managers of over one million
apartments in the City. In that capacity, Mr. Posilkin addresses myriad issues that affect property owners which arise in the courts, in government agencies and in the State Legislature and City
Council. Prior to the commencement of his tenure at RSA in January 1996, Mr. Posilkin served as Deputy General Counsel of the Department of Housing Preservation and Development for
eleven years, including two and one half years as the Acting Director of the Department's Housing Litigation Bureau. Mr. Posilkin began his career as an Assistant Corporation Counsel in the Division of Legal Counsel at the New York City Law Department from 1979 to 1984. Mr. Posilkin graduated from the State University of New York at Binghamton in 1976 and from New
York Law School, where he served as an editor of the Law Review, in 1979. Mr. Posilkin until recently, served as a representative of property owners on the Housing Court Advisory Council. He has previously served on the Advisory Council as the City’s representative and as a representative of property owners, and has also served on the Housing Court Committee of
the Association of the Bar of the City of New York. Mr. Posilkin has presented at many seminars held by RSA, the New York State Office of Court Administration, the New York City Bar Association, the New York State Bar Association and the Kings County Housing Court Bar Association, including programs pertaining to the significant changes
over the years in the State’s rent regulatory laws and regulations, the City’s lead paint laws, Section 8, and numerous other regulatory and legislative issues of concern to property owners.
Ronald D. Hariri, Esq.
Ronald D. Hariri is a real estate and commercial litigator with over thirty-five years of experience. He has represented a diverse client base ranging from large commercial landlords and developers and managing agents to small property owners, residential and commercial tenants, as well as closely held corporations, small business ventures and financial institutions. Mr. Hariri's Law Firm has served as a designated law firm for the Rent Stabilization Association's Legal Plan (NYC's largest trade association) since 1989. Mr. Hariri pioneered this legal plan more than twenty-five years ago to help smaller property owners deal with the court and administrative systems. Mr. Hariri has served as representative of the real estate industry on the Housing Court Advisory
Council appointed by the Chief Administrative Judge. He is a member of the New York State Bar Association and Association of the Bar of the City of New York, where he previously served as Secretary of the Civil Court Committee and also served as a member of the State Court Committee and Housing Court Committee. Mr. Hariri has participated in scores of evaluations of judicial candidates and judges for the past decade for the City Bar and Advisory Council. A life-long New Yorker, Mr. Hariri is a magna cum laude graduate of Columbia College and was
also graduated from Columbia University's School of Law, where he also served as editor of his Law Journal. During his last year at Columbia Law, Mr. Hariri clerked for the United States District Judge Mary Johnson Lowe of the Southern District of New York. He began his legal career at Finley, Kumble, Wagner, Heine, Underberg & Casey. Mr. Hariri also has taught continuing legal education courses on the purchase of real estate and summary proceedings and writes frequently for real estate trade publications. He was born in Forest Hills, Queens, and currently resides in
Manhattan and Eastern Long Island. In addition to his real estate practice, Mr. Hariri is an experienced commercial litigator, who has appeared in both Federal and State Courts on a broad spectrum of matters including corporate and securities disputes as well as estate and business litigation matters. Mr. Hariri has handled cases
throughout the City of New York in all Courts and Agencies involving housing, landlord-tenant and real estate matters. He is admitted to the Federal and State Courts of New York and has been admitted pro haec vice to the Federal and State Courts of New Jersey.
Howard Stern, Esq.
Howard Stern, Esq. has been the Administrator of the Rent Stabilization Association's (RSA)
Legal Service Plan since 1994. Mr. Stern is a lecturer and the moderator for most RSA seminars and, among his specialties, are assisting in the purchase and sale of rent regulated properties in New York. In addition to
teaching the RSA Non-Payment Seminar, he has lectured on the Americans with Disabilities Act and he is also a frequent lecturer for SPONY (Small Property Owners of New York). As a monthly contributor, Mr. Stern writes a column for the RSA Reporter and his column has been quoted in Blackstone Publishing and New York Magazine in real estate related issues. Mr. Stern is a native of New York City: a Bronxite, to be exact. He graduated from the Bronx High School of Science and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from City College of New York in 1974. In 1972, he began working in a family law firm while he was attending college. Mr. Stem attended New York Law School and he was admitted to practice law before the Courts of the State of New York in September 1978, before the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in August 1979 and before the Eastern District of that court in September of that same year. Since that time, he has actively engaged in the practice of law, first as Managing Director for the law firm of Stern & Weissman for nearly ten years and, since 1988 and to this date, as a
solo practitioner. Mr. Stern served as an Administrative Law Judge for the New York City Taxi & Limousine
Commission from 1986 to 1990. He has also acted as Of Counsel to Horing, Welikson & Rosen P.C., a law firm specializing in landlord/tenant and real estate law. From 1985 through 1991, when they closed their Retail Division, Mr. Stern presided over real estate closings for Barclays Bank of New York. Mr. Stern is currently a member of the Real Estate Subcommittee of Financing of the New York State Bar Association. Mr. Stern is a frequent contributor to the New England real Estate Journal and is on the advisory board of the Apartment Law Insider.
Charles D. Wasserman, Esq.
Charles D. Wasserman is a partner of the law firm of Novick, Edelstein, Lubell, Reisman, Wasserman & Leventhal, P.C. The firm litigates housing Court matters in the City of New York, Westchester, Long Island and Rockland County. The firm also handles Non-Payment and Holdover proceedings, Closings and Contracts, Foreclosures, DHCR proceedings, HPD proceedings, 7A proceedings, Bankruptcy, and Supreme Court Litigation. Charles Wasserman
graduated from Brooklyn Law School in 1995 and is admitted to the New York State Bar. Mr. Wasserman's area of specialty are Commercial and Residential litigation. Mr. Wasserman is a member of the American Bar Association, New York State Bar Association, and is the Vice President of the Kings County Housing Court Bar Association.
Eric M. Zim, Esq.
Eric Marc Zim became managing partner of Horwitz & Zim Law Group, P.C. (“HZ Law”) in January 1, 2000. Mr. Zim is a graduate of Hofstra University School of Law. He is a member of the New York State Bar and is admitted to practice in the Southern Federal District Court of New York. Mr. Zim is the principal trial attorney for the firm. He has engaged in the practice of law for over two decades, and litigated cases on such various and diverse issues as; commercial and transactional real estate disputes, mortgage foreclosures, legal malpractice, brokerage
commissions, rent strikes, and lease disputes. In addition to representing corporate clients, individual building owners, real estate developers and real estate management firms, Mr. Zim brings to HZ Law the additional expertise of handling Landlord & Tenant disputes, having been a Court Attorney for the Civil Court of the
City of New York. His trial experience also extends to various Summary Holdover proceedings including owner occupancy and non-primary residence cases. Mr. Zim has lectured at the Real Estate Board of New York on cooperative and condominium sales contracts. He has been appointed Receiver and Referee in numerous foreclosure actions.
The New York City Bar Association frequently refers clients to Mr. Zim based on his extensive experience and qualifications. Likewise, the Rent Stabilization Association recommends Mr. Zim as attorney of choice to represent its members in Landlord & Tenant litigation. Prior to joining HZ Law, Mr. Zim was associated with Belkin Burden Wenig & Goldman, LLP, and Finkelstein Borah Schwartz Altschuler & Goldstein, P.C. For the last three consecutive years, Development Magazine has ranked Mr. Zim among the “Top 100 Real Estate Lawyers” in the City of New York.
