IBLT History

The IBLT had its roots in Touro Law’s innovative 1997 “CyberSymposium,” a full-day conference on the Internet and legal issues which was Webcast and streamed over the Internet in real-time (and whose proceedings were collected in 14 Touro L. Rev (Fall 1997).  By the autumn of 2000, then-Dean Howard Glickstein, Vice Dean Gary Shaw and Associate Dean Linda Howard Weissman began developing an “E Commerce Institute,” with the assistance of an advisory board of attorneys and business professionals from Long Island’s leading technology and law firms.  Among the members of that advisory board were Seymour Liebman, general counsel of Canon USA and a Touro Law alumnus; Peter Goldsmith of LISTnet; Wayne Brody of Arrow Electronics; Dean Yacov Shamash of Stony Brook University; Allan Cohen of Nixon Peabody; Paul Rubell, then with Rivkin, Radler; Chuck Bilich, then with Meltzer Lippe; David Aker, a patent practitioner and long-time Touro adjunct professor; and Jonathan Ezor, then an in-house attorney at Mimeo.com and counsel to Farrell Fritz.  Over the next few years, the advisory board met every few months, making plans for courses and programs, including clinics and a case study course designed by Jennifer Lupo, a Touro Law alumna who was then general counsel to EDiets.com. This in turn led to the launching of a Cyberlaw course taught by new adjunct Jonathan Ezor and a half-day CLE conference on e-commerce legal issues (jointly presented with Albany Law School) in June 2002.