Kathy Hirata Chin has been a Partner at Crowell & Moring LLP since she moved there in October 2018 with the rest of the healthcare practice group after 38 years at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP. She is currently planning to retire March 31, 2024, to spend more time with her family, including her granddaughter, while continuing with her other activities as described below.
Ms. Chin graduated from Princeton University and Columbia Law School, where she was Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Transnational Law. She served as a Commissioner on the NYC Planning Commission from 1995 to 2001 and is currently Acting Chair of the NYC Commission to Combat Police Corruption. She has served on the Federal Magistrate Judge Merit Selection Panel for the Eastern District of NY, Governor Mario Cuomo’s Judicial Screening Committee for the First Department, the Gender Bias Committee of the Second Circuit Task Force, former Chief Judge Judith Kaye’s Commission to Promote Public Confidence in Judicial Elections, the Second Circuit Judicial Conference Planning and Program Committee, the Board of Directors of the NY County Lawyers Association and the NYC Bar Association, and the Board of Directors of NY Lawyers for the Public Interest, a non-profit that advocates for marginalized New Yorkers.
She currently serves on the Attorney Emeritus Advisory Council and the Commercial Division Advisory Council, appointed to both by former Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman of the New York State Court of Appeals, and as Co-Chair of the Board of Directors of the Medicare Rights Center, a national non-profit organization dedicated to helping older adults and people with disabilities get affordable health care. In 2012, 2014, and in 2021 she was nominated for appointment to the New York State Court of Appeals by the New York State Commission on Judicial Nomination. Since 2016, she has been a member of the Second Circuit Judicial Council Committee on Civic Education & Public Engagement and of the Governor’s Judicial Screening Committee for the First Department. In 2021 she became a member of the Board of EmblemHealth, one of the nation’s largest not-for-profit health insurers. Since 2022, she has been Chair of the Board of Advisors of Fordham Law School’s Center on Asian Americans and the Law, a first-of-its-kind institution with three core missions: civic education, scholarship and AAPI legal studies, and outreach and public advocacy. She has received the NYC Bar’s Diversity and Inclusion Champion Award, AABANY’s Women’s Leadership Award, the inaugural Hong Yen Chang awards from Columbia APALSA and Columbia Law School Association, and the 2022 Daniel K. Inouye Trailblazer Award from the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association.