Coming to Guttman from Great Neck North High School in 2013, Noy Kruvi described himself as “not a good student. I needed to find purpose and passion.”
When his family moved from Long Island to the Upper East Side, the commute was so much easier that the Liberal Arts major found he had time to go to classes and try “other things.” Like becoming a Peer Mentor, where he worked with now-Guttman Vice President Danny Ambrose, who, fast forward ten years, would write in support of Noy’s admission to the New York State bar in 2024. Invited by then-faculty member Katie Wilson, Noy became a Global Ambassador with the College’s pilot Bronx-Berlin Exchange, where he and his fellow students travelled to Germany in December 2014 and then hosted their German peers in New York City in May 2015.
“I have a lot of gratitude for Guttman. It gave me an excellent foundation, and I made good friends there. Majoring in the Liberal Arts isn’t something I would recommend to everyone, but it was absolutely the right thing for me. I needed to figure out what I wanted to do, how to think critically, how to do public speaking, and Guttman gave that to me. I think it has to be the right investment for the right person. It gave me perspective. I highly recommend it for those who are undecided.”
After graduating in 2015, Kruvi transferred to Hartwick College in Oneonta in upstate New York, obtaining a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy. He considered pursuing a master’s in philosophy, but dissuaded by the nature of the labor market, took a break and decided to ultimately to get a master’s in environmental law and policy from Vermont Law and Graduate School, completing his degree in 2019. The same year, he was accepted into their J.D. program and started studying law. He says, “My master’s primarily equipped me with an administrative understanding of the law.” It gave him a practical view of how laws are put into practice, and how the government agencies that enforce them work. “In contrast,” he explains, “The J.D. program was more diversified. It trained me to think like a lawyer and provided me with a broad view across many different areas of the law, not just one specialized field like environmental law,” he explains.
What Noy wasn’t prepared for — nor anyone — was that after completing his first semester, he would be forced to continue his studies in front of a screen. “I’ll never forget — right after our Barrister’s Ball (a semi-formal annual event law schools host, often referred to as ‘law school prom,’), COVID happened. My law school classmates and I say, ‘We had a party and then the world shut down.’”
He continued studying law remotely for a year and a half, only returning to the Vermont campus in his third year. While he was there, Noy edited the school’s journal, the Vermont Law Review, and excelled in presenting the oral arguments in Moot Court competitions. “I enjoy public speaking, and the idea of helping people in tough and challenging situations spoke to me, so I knew that I wanted to litigate after graduation,” he says.
Upon graduating from VLGS in 2022, Noy passed the bar in New Hampshire and worked as an associate attorney for a corporate law firm in their labor and employment group. Soon after, he became licensed to practice law in New York and became a Member of New York State Bar Association.
Today, Noy is an attorney of practice with Consumer Legal Group, a relatively new firm that represents clients with consumer debt issues. With an office in the Financial District, the firm seeks to protect clients from abusive creditors and creditor tactics. Noy works on landlord-tenant litigation in the firm’s real estate subdivision. During the pandemic, the city largely suspended eviction proceedings. Today, there are a surge of accumulated previous cases along with new filings that are overwhelming the system. “There’s still so much backlog in housing court since the pandemic, the impacts of which make these proceedings rather complicated,” he states.
Surprisingly, it’s in unravelling the complications where Noy’s Liberal Arts background in philosophy serves him — and his clients — well. “I can appreciate how studying philosophy helps me see nuance in the cases I deal with. I’m thinking of the principle of non-contradiction, a fundamental rule of logic: If something is true, then the opposite of it is false. But when you listen to people, you see it’s complex, sometimes ‘both/and,’’’ he says.
“Sometimes the clients we represent are unaware of their rights or their obligations, and then they’re exposed to a cascading ‘parade of horribles’ as a result. [In this job], I see hard problems all parties are facing, tenants and landlords alike. As my law professors taught me, you’re setting up a T-chart, visually representing two different sets of information, comparing and contrasting the arguments. It’s actually always a dialectic. People hold two different points of view, and you try to help them arrive at a resolution.”
Taking on complex issues in housing isn’t easy, but it is necessary. “I very much enjoy being in court on an almost daily basis. Do I ever feel nervous, going into court? Well, yes, sometimes, but no matter what, I have to put on a brave face because the client sitting next to me is even more nervous.”
Off-setting the pressures inherent in his job, Noy makes use of his free time to go for runs, eat out, enjoy live music and spend time with friends. It’s that pursuit of “a good life” — a concept philosophers have debated for centuries. “Look,” Noy says, “work-life balance is always a horizon for people. In the law world, there’s recognition that there’s a real mental health epidemic. There’s a truism that ‘Law school doesn’t prepare you for the bar, the bar doesn’t prepare you for practice.’ People get the message that if you want to make partner, you’re going to have to miss family events, never go on a vacation. But it’s really up to you to decide how you can ‘reclaim your time.’ Nobody tells you these things; you have to be mindful of how you feel.”
Looking back, Noy is very clear when he says: “Without Guttman, I wouldn’t be where I am today.”
Looking forward, he’s just as clear: “What’s a future goal? I see myself working for myself. Having a boutique law practice, taking on general litigation, personal injury, and family matters. Overall, living a good life.”
