Ellin Mulholland of Hampton Bays Remembered as Leading Attorney

On Sept. 30, 1995, in its 90th anniversary year, Fordham Law School presented Ellin with the Dean’s Medal of Recognition – the highest award the school can bestow. In May 2015, Ellin received an Honorary Doctorate degree from Albertus Magnus College. The remembrances below are adapted from the remarks of Dean John D. Feerick of Fordham Law School: Ellin Mulholland was senior partner at the New York City firm of Herzfeld & Rubin, where she practiced in the area of construction litigation and products liability.

She made her mark in the law, both as a student, being one of two women in her graduating class, and as a practitioner, being one of the first women litigators in the torts and products liability field in New York City. She further distinguished herself by becoming one of the first two women to be named as board members of the American Board of Trial Advocates.

Ellin received her Bachelors of Arts degree in French from Albertus Magnus College in New Haven, Connecticut, and holds the equivalent of a Masters of Arts degree from the University of Toulouse in France.

While making a lasting mark in the profession, Ellin was a leader in the community. She was a member of the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees of her alma mater, Albertus Magnus college, the Board of Governors of the Association of Trial Lawyers of the City of New York, and a past Vice President of the Guild of Catholic Lawyers. She also served as a judge for the National Trial Advocacy program for law students at the U.S. Eastern District Courthouse.

She was a member of the Committee on Tort Litigation of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, where she lectured on Trial Practice, and a member of the Papal Order of Knights and Ladies of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem. Ellin’s parents, both lawyers, were her inspirations and role models.

Her mother, Natalie MacCarthy, was a 1927 graduate of Fordham Law School. Ellin’s father James V. Mulholland graduated from New York Law School. He served the City of New York as a Director of Recreation for the Commissioner of Parks, and later as a Justice of the Domestic Relations Court. A native New Yorker, Ellin grew up in Jamaica Estates, Queens, where she graduated from The Mary Louis Academy.

After many years of extraordinary service in the law, she retired from the New York City law firm of Herzfeld & Rubin, P.C. and moved to her beloved summer home in Hampon Bays which she purchased in 1982.

A Mass of Resurrection was held on Saturday, February 28 at St. Rosalie’s Church in Hampton Bays. A burial in Good Ground Cemetery followed the mass.