Women’s Bar Set to Celebrate NY Senator & 35th Anniversary

State Sen. Shelley Mayer has fond memories of her time as a young attorney in Buffalo.

“It was a dynamic, exciting place to be a young woman lawyer who wanted to go into law to try to improve the world,” she said of the city in the early 1980s.

The Yonkers native finished law school at the University at Buffalo and stayed in Western New York for several years, first working as a labor attorney at what was then Collins Collins & Dinardo and then as an assistant state attorney general. While here, she helped form the local chapter of the Women’s Bar Association of the State of New York. She became the chapter’s first president in 1984.

Mayer was invited to return and will be honored with the M. Dolores Denman Lady Justice Award during a celebration of the group’s 35th anniversary on Oct. 17 at Babeville’s Asbury Hall in Buffalo.

“I’m very honored to get this,” Mayer said. “It was a very long time ago that we formed (the WNY chapter).”