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A member of the School and Municipal Law Group, Pat's practice includes the firm’s representation of public schools and municipal agencies. He represents these entities in all aspects of organization, management, operation and finance. This practice calls on multiple expertise. Pat specializes in labor and personnel law, including collective bargaining, disability, harassment, and other employment discrimination, capital leasing, software licensing, and other procurement, construction, real estate acquisition, finance and taxation, and student rights.
In addition to this work, Pat counsels the firm’s public sector, as well as emerging charter schools and many of the firm’s private clients, in personnel issues, land use and development, trademark and copyright matters.
Pat currently serves as the appointed Solicitor to the Hampton, Pine Richland, Quaker Valley and Riverview School Districts, as well as special counsel to various other school districts.
He has served as President of both the Allegheny County Bar Municipal and School Solicitors Association and the Pennsylvania School Boards Solicitors Association, and remains active as a current Director of both associations. He has also served and maintained membership in the National Council of School Attorneys, an affiliate of the National School Boards Association.
For years, Pat has participated as a guest speaker in the PSBA's (Professional School Board Association) Legal Roundup program. Each program offers a "year in review" of court decisions, statutes and regulations that affect school entities. In March 2010, Pat presented on Collective Bargaining in public schools under the heading "Statutory Fundamentals of Acts 195 (1970) and 88 (1992)", as part of the School Leadership Program in the University of Pittsburgh, Graduate School of Education. Full-day Saturday Institutes in the Program focus on topics within the Program curriculum such as Collective Bargaining, Ethics in the Workplace, Pupil Personnel Challenges, and Adult Learning within a Learning Community. By interaction with experts on the given topic, the Saturday Institutes enable students to meet a portion of their field experience requirements toward advanced degrees and certification as school superintendents.
Pat has been named to the “The Best Lawyers in America” list for four consecutive years, 2007 through 2010, by peer evaluation and nomination. After graduating from Allegheny College in 1976, with concentrations in economics and geology, Pat continued his education at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law and received his Juris Doctor in 1979.
Pat is admitted to practice in all Pennsylvania State Courts, the U.S. District Court of the Western District of Pennsylvania and the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
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