Mayor Zohran Mamdani, center, welcomes Steven Banks, left, as his nominee to head the city’s Law Department.
Photo by Lloyd Mitchelll
Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s legal administration is taking the reins with an ambitious plan to expand the city Law Department by at least 200 lawyers. But who are his top lawyers and how will their different roles intersect with his agenda?
Just before his inauguration, Mamdani named longtime public interest attorney Steven Banks as his pick for the city’s next corporation counsel, the head of the massive agency that manages the city’s litigation, and named Ramzi Kassem as chief counsel, the mayor’s personal lawyer.
Experts see Mamdani as positioning the Law Department to take an assertive role in advancing the administration’s agenda, with a focus on proactive litigation on issues like affordable housing.
“Mayor Mamdani has indicated at least the possibility of more lawyers in order to engage in perhaps more aggressive city positioning on issues,” said Stephen Louis, a veteran of the New York City Law Department and current distinguished fellow at New York Law School.
But the two roles have important differences in their proximity to the mayor. As the chief legal officer, the corporation counsel heads the Law Department, the agency that represents not just the mayor but all city agencies. Corporation counsel is a statutory role established by the city charter, whereas chief counsel is appointed at the mayor’s discretion — a more modern convention that goes back at least to Mayor Ed Koch.
The mayor’s chief counsel
The key difference between the mayor’s top legal advisers is their independence. While corporation counsel, with its much larger range of responsibilities, can side with the New York City Council or comptroller against the mayor on policy and legal questions, the chief counsel serves the mayor’s specific policy and political interests.
The job is to be “the lawyer for the mayor, not the lawyer for the city,” said Professor Bennett Gershman, an expert in prosecutorial and legal ethics at Pace University.
Unlike the Law Department, which is more “in the trenches” with litigation and contracts, the chief counsel’s office often plays the role of a confidential adviser to the mayor. As a client, the mayor has attorney-client privilege, so this person is someone “who the mayor trusts.”
“Issues involving the police department, issues involving ice, issues involving sanctuary issues involving, the roundup of immigrants — the mayor will be advised by his lawyer,” Gershman said.
They act as the general counsel for City Hall itself, handling personnel and operational legal matters within the mayor’s immediate staff.
That close connection to the mayor can lead to issues if there are disagreements. Lisa Zornberg, for example, Adams’ second chief counsel, resigned in September 2024, reportedly after the mayor declined to follow her advice to terminate Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Phil Banks and senior public safety adviser Tim Pearson, two aides who were being investigated by federal authorities.
Corporation counsel under Mamdani
In the coming months, Banks will undergo the City Council’s confirmation process to be made corporation counsel.
That’s a process instated by voters in 2019 — one that came to the fore under Mayor Eric Adams when legislators grilled the fitness of his nominee Randy Mastro, and ultimately compelled him to withdraw his nomination for the post. Council members specifically expressed their skepticism that Mastro wouldn’t maintain his independence from the mayor. Mastro subsequently became the mayor’s top deputy.
Banks has a unique resume, having led both the city’s Department of Social Services under Mayor Bill de Blasio and, prior to that, the New York Legal Aid Society as attorney in chief. He’s been both an adversary and a client of the New York City Law Department — a background that could help him craft legal arguments from different perspectives.
“He has the potential of having some excellent insight into the role of the office, because in both those roles you see the strengths and weaknesses of a particular office,” Louis said.
Civil lawsuits against the city range far and wide, from slips and falls on city-owned property to unlawful searches from law enforcement, but the Law Department launches its own actions too — taking on issues concerning the city’s commercial contracts or regulation enforcement.
Banks will undertake the plan to hire 200 more attorneys to the Law Department, a move that will reverse some pandemic-driven decreases in staff and add new manpower to the policy projects that Mamdani has suggested.
The Law Department’s intervention in landlord bankruptcy actions and other lawsuits regarding affordable housing is going to be “fairly new,” according to Louis.
The department is also likely to find itself responding to the actions of the Trump administration.
“That could be another area where there already are new needs that will require more hiring,” Louis said.
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