Paul Keefe

VP of Legal Services

Joined CSS: 2022

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Departments & Programs

Legal Advocacy

Bio

Paul oversees CSS’s Legal Department, which helps clients minimize the effect of their criminal records on their ability to pursue employment, housing, education, and other necessities. Paul first worked for CSS as a Haywood Burns Fellow and, later, as a Yale Public Interest Initiative Fellow before permanently joining the Legal Department in 2008. Along with representing people with criminal records in state and federal court against background check companies and public and private employers, Paul created and supervised the Next Door Project, which trains senior citizen volunteers to help individuals obtain, understand, and fix their criminal records. He was also the lead legal advocate behind the Fair Chance Act, an amendment to the New York City Human Rights Law (“NYCHRL”) that is the strongest “ban the box” law in the country.

Following enactment of the Fair Chance Act in 2015, Paul left CSS to enforce it and the other employment protections of the NYCHRL as a Supervising Attorney at the New York City Commission on Human Rights. At the Commission, he won hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages and penalties for victims of discrimination and changed the hiring practices of numerous national companies.  He also worked to broaden protections under the Fair Chance Act, which now covers people at every stage of a criminal proceeding, ensuring that minor contact with the criminal punishment system does not render a person unemployable.

Paul is a 2007 graduate of the City University of New York School of Law, where he was editor-in-chief of the New York City Law Review. In 2016, he was named a “Rising Star” by the New York Law Journal.