Frederick Schaffer

General Counsel and Senior Vice Chancellor for Legal Affairs

Frederick P. Schaffer is General Counsel and Senior Vice Chancellor for Legal Affairs of The City University of New York. In this position, he is responsible for providing legal counsel to the Board of Trustees, the Chancellor and the University on a wide range of issues and supervising a legal department of 18 lawyers. Mr. Schaffer also serves as General Counsel to the CUNY Construction Fund, a public authority that finances capital construction at the University. Previously, Mr. Schaffer was a litigation partner in the law firm of Schulte Roth & Zabel LLP, where he specialized in commercial and securities litigation and employment law. Earlier in his career, Mr. Schaffer served as Counsel to Mayor Koch, Chief of Litigation in the Office of the Corporation Counsel of the City of New York and Assistant U.S. Attorney in Manhattan. He also was an Associate Professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. Mr. Schaffer recently served as Chairman of the Legal Aid Society and is currently a Trustee of the Practising Law Institute. He has previously served as Chairman of NYC Public/Private Initiatives, Inc. and a Director of the University Settlement Society. He is also active in the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, where he has served as a member of a number of committees, including the Executive Committee, the Nominating Committee and as Chairman of the Committee on Education and the Law. Mr. Schaffer received his B.A. degree summa cum laude from Harvard College and his J.D. degree magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. Following law school, he clerked for the Honorable Francis L. Van Dusen, Circuit Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Mr. Schaffer was a recipient of one of the 2011 Awards for Excellence in Public Service from the New York State Bar Association