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“Ask the Lawyer” (ATL) is a resource-sharing effort to give libraries, museums and archives access to timely guidance and advice about legal issues impacting mission and operations. Since 2016, the ATL service has been providing answers to members of participating Library Resource Councils in New York State. ATL features questions submitted by librarians, connecting real-world situations to practical, timely, and ethics-focused legal commentary, on topics such as Ethics, Copyright, Trademark, Not-for-Profit law, Information access, CPLR 4509, Contracts, Format transfer, Preservation, Library policies, and more.

About the Presenter:

Stephanie A. Adams, Esq. (Nickname: Cole), is an attorney practicing from her own law firm in Buffalo, NY. Adams chose a career in the law so she could focus her professional life on the law’s impact on creativity and communication. She has also worked as a print and broadcast journalist. Adams’s extensive writing on legal issues facing today’s libraries, including issues impacting the freedom to read, can be seen regularly on the “Ask the Lawyer” service, hosted by the Western New York Library Resources Council.

Adams’s focus on speech-related legal issues started with her final project at her alma mater, Hampshire College in Massachusetts. While completing her B.A., Adams also had an internship at the Northampton-based Comic Book Legal Defense Fund in 1996, an experience she would reprise while working on her J.D. the summer of ’98.  She was a page during high school at the New Hartford Town Library, worked in the Hampshire College library transcribing archives, and worked in the library at her law school.

Prior to working at the firm she founded in 2017, Adams spent over 10 years serving as an in-house counsel at Niagara University, where her work demanded consideration of not-for-profit, risk management, student, and labor law issues, along with deep respect for academic freedom. Prior to that, (as “Stephanie Cole”) she was a partner in the firm of Bloom, Cole, & Shonn, LLP.

For more information on Adams’ experience and current practice, visit the website for The Law Office of Stephanie Adams (LOSA), PLLC.

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