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Sep 03rd

About: Zulima Farber

Zulima V. Farber was born in 1944 in Cuba. She fled that country in 1961, after Castro gained control, and moved in with an aunt in West New York, New Jersey. She graduated from Memorial High School in 1963, and, although she had been accepted to college, she could not attend that year because she needed to help support her parents, who had finally arrived from Cuba that summer. She got a job as a secretary to an attorney in Union City, New Jersey, and worked there until she was able to fulfill her dream of getting a college education. While at Montclair State College, Ms. Farber earned a scholarship to attend the University of Madrid, where she spent her junior year. She received Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from Montclair State. In 1971, Ms. Farber was one of a handful of Hispanics admitted to Rutgers Law School-Newark, where she became a founding member of the Association of Latin American Law Students and served as the Association’s vice-president. She received her JD from Rutgers in 1974. Her career since then has been marked by continued success and a series of “firsts”. She was the first Hispanic to serve as Assistant Prosecutor in Bergen County, where she rose through the ranks to be the first woman appointed to head a division (Chief of the Grand Jury Section). After a successful career as a prosecutor, which included the prosecution of major crimes and homicides, Ms. Farber was recruited to serve as Assistant Counsel to Governor Byrne under then Chief Counsel (now retired Justices of the New Jersey Supreme Court) Stewart G. Pollock and Daniel J. O’Hern. She was the first Hispanic to serve in the Office of the Counsel of the Governor. In that capacity, Ms. Farber was responsible for all criminal legislation, and oversaw the passage of major legislative initiatives, such as the Omnibus Amendments to the new Criminal Code that became effective in 1979, and the New Parole Act of 1980. At the end of the Byrne Administration, Ms. Farber joined the prestigious law firm of Lowenstein, Sandler in Roseland as an associate, and became the firm’s first female partner in 1986. In 1992, Governor Florio appointed Ms. Farber to serve on his Cabinet as the Public Advocate and Public Defender for the State of New Jersey. This was another first for Ms. Farber, since no Hispanic woman had ever served as a member of the Governor’s Cabinet in New Jersey. During her tenure, Ms. Farber implemented a major reorganization of the management of the Public Defender offices, during which she appointed the first Hispanics and the first African-American women to head Public Defender County Offices. At the end of the Florio Administration, Ms. Farber returned to the private practice of law as a partner at Lowenstein Sandler PC. In January, 2006, Ms. Farber was sworn in as the Attorney General of the State of New Jersey, having been nominated by Governor Corzine and confirmed by the Senate. In October 2006, Ms. Farber returned to Lowenstein Sandler once again as a partner. In addition to her work as a busy litigator, Ms. Farber participates in the management of the firm, having been the first woman to serve on the firm’s Executive and Strategic Planning Committees; she serves currently on the Firm’s Board of Directors. Ms. Farber is a former member of the State Supreme Court Advisory Committee on Professional Ethics, and of the Supreme Court’s Committees on Character, Evidence Rules and Criminal Rules. Ms. Farber has served on numerous boards and commissions, including the N.J. Sports and Exposition Authority, the Fairleigh Dickinson University Board of Trustees, the Liberty HealthCare System Board of Trustees and the State advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. She is also a Visiting Associate at the Eagleton Institute at Rutgers University, was elected to membership in the American Law Institute in 1997, and Fellow of the American Bar Foundation in 1995. Finally, she has also been honored by at least ten institutions from the national, education, legal and civic areas including: Trial Bar Award (1996) by the Trial Attorneys of New Jersey; the Height of Achievement Award (1993) by the YWCA of Central Jersey; the Congresswoman Mary T. Norton Award (1993) by United Way of Hudson County; the Woman of Achievement Award (1993) by the Women’s Political Caucus of New Jersey; the Mary Philbrook Award (1996) by the Rutgers Law School - Camden, Women’s Law Caucus; and the Legal Services of New Jersey Equal Justice Medal (1997).

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