Oceanside resident to become president of the Nassau County Bar Association

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On June 2, lifelong Oceanside resident Greg Lisi was appointed president-elect of the Nassau County Bar Association. He will serve a one-year term and then officially become president in June 2021.

“It’s very exciting,” Lisi said. “It’s quite an honor. It’s a lot of work, but it really is quite an honor to eventually be the leader of the Nassau County Bar Association.”

Lisi, 53, is the chairman of the employment and labor practice group at the Forchelli Deegan Terrana LLP firm. There he handles claims for businesses of all sizes on Long Island and in New York City, including sexual harassment, discrimination, wage issues and civil rights cases. In Oceanside, he is the coach of the Stallions roller hockey team and a member of the Kiwanis Club.

Lisi has served many years on the board of directors for the Bar Association, and worked his way up from secretary to treasurer to vice president and now president-elect. The Bar Association is an organization of more than 4,500 attorneys that has been in existence since 1899, and it represents the interests of attorneys in Nassau.

In his new role, Lisi will oversee the association, which has many functions, including assisting the general public in finding an attorney through a lawyer referral service, providing free advice through a number of different sources, hosting clinics on mortgage foreclosures where people being foreclosed on can speak to an attorney at no charge and leading a Hurricane Sandy clinic for community members who have issues related to the disaster. Recently, the NCBA began a Covid-19 small business and resident hotline, where community members and business owners can email covidhelp@nassaubar.org if they’re having difficulties in the wake of the pandemic.

“We do a lot for the community,” Lisi said. “We do a lot of charitable giving through our charitable arm called We Care, which gives money to worthy causes in the county.” He added that the association gives awards to Long Island and Nassau County firms and attorneys who do the most pro bono work, and reviews judicial applicants for candidates who want to become judges. Additionally, the association organizes student mock trials for high schools.

Lisi said he has many goals for his presidency, including helping with civil rights issues by endorsing diversity and inclusion, increasing the association’s technological footprint and assisting those who have been impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic.

“I want the Bar Association and courts to work together to help alleviate the issues,” he said. “The world has changed in the last four months in a lot of ways, and I feel like this is a very good opportunity for the Bar Association to become an even more prominent player in the community with helping people, not only with their civil rights issues, but with other issues that have been caused by the Covid pandemic.”

Lisi has been a member of the association for about 25 years. He lives in Oceanside with his wife, Judy, and children, Jessica, 18, Dylan, 16, and Ethan, 13. He is a graduate of Oceanside High School and earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Buffalo and his juris doctorate from Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C.

He is admitted in New York, the District of Columbia, the Supreme Court of the United States of America, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and the United States District Court for the Eastern and Southern districts of New York.

Lisi is a member of the state Bar Association’s Board of Delegates, a former chair of the NCBA Labor and Employment Law Committee, two-time chair of the NCBA Access to Justice Committee and has been named Pro Bono Attorney of the Year.

“This is a real opportunity for the Bar Association to become really connected to the community,” he said, “and we can turn this negative, this pandemic, into a positive and just become even more entrenched in our community and in the county as a whole. … The association gives back not only to the attorneys that are part of it, but it gives back to the community and everything that we do takes the community into consideration, both individuals and businesses.”