Claire Banks.
From a Bergen County judicial clerkship and The Legal Aid Society to the Spodek bench - an associate whose training runs from the chambers side of the courtroom to the defense table.
Trained in chambers first.
Claire Banks started where most defense lawyers never get to: inside a judge’s chambers. As law clerk to the Honorable Peter J. Melchionne in Bergen County Superior Court, she read the motions that worked and the ones that did not - and learned that cases are won on paper long before anyone stands up. A stop at Fogarty & Hara in New Jersey followed; since January 2022, she has been at this firm.
Won on paper.
At Spodek Law Group her lane is federal motions practice in the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York - suppression, dismissal, sentencing submissions - the documents that decide cases before a jury is ever seated. It is precision work, and she is built for it: a J.D. from Penn State Law, a LexisNexis professional research certification, and a psychology degree from the University of Texas at Austin - which turns out to be exactly the right training for reading a prosecutor.
Before the defense.
Her earliest legal work was on the other side of need - The Legal Aid Society of New York City and Penn State Law’s family law clinic - representing people the system was not built to hear. That instinct came with her: clients get their calls returned, their options explained in plain language, and their cases fought.
How Claire works.
Federal cases are decided in motions - suppression, dismissal, sentencing. Hers are built like arguments for a judge she has already studied, because she has.
She clerked before she practiced. She writes for how judges actually read - fast, skeptical, and looking for the one paragraph that decides it.
Options explained in plain language, calls returned, no surprises. The client is the only constituency.
Put Claire on your case.
Answered within 24 hours, guaranteed. Some stories are better told out loud -
212 300 5196