Rockville Centre resident new president of Bar Association

Martha Krisel, center, with former mayor Gene Murray and Mayor Francis X. Murray.

Courtesy Hector Herrera

A Rockville Centre resident is now officially the president of the Nassau County Bar Association.

Martha Krisel has been acting as de facto president for the past seven months, finishing the term of the previous president, Steven Eisman, who died last November. She was installed for her own one-year-term on June 7. “No one had ever been president for more than a year,” she said. “What was unusual in this case is that I’m serving for a second year, and that’s unprecedented at the Bar Association.”

Krisel practiced law for the past 35 years, and has been involved with the Bar Association for 25, serving as secretary, treasurer and president-elect. She moved to Rockville Centre in 1986, raised her three children, Nina, Jeremy and Brittany, who are now adults.

From 1996 to 2006, she was the Rockville Centre Village Attorney, a position that then-Mayor Gene Murray created. “Undaunted by the potential logistics of a working mother with very young kids, Mayor Murray embraced my children as his own,” Krisel said at her instillation. “When the school nurse called, meetings were rescheduled without hesitation, no matter who was at the table.”

Currently, she consults with New York State on its post-Hurricane Sandy infrastructure rebuild. She will return to the Office of the Nassau County Attorney this summer, where she had served from 2006 to 2014 as the Chief Deputy County Attorney for Special Projects.

Krisel said that the first seven months of her tenure involved implementing the ideas of the former president. “I knew very specifically what my predecessor, Steve Eisman, wanted to accomplish,” she said. “I felt very strongly about accomplishing his goals — which I did. So now that Steve’s term is over and I’ve accomplished his goals, I have the luxury of setting my own goals.”

Eisman’s goals included maintaining and repairing the Bar Association building and creating an informal forum for new lawyers and judges. To that end, Krisel has established the Steven J. Eisman Memorial Building Fund, and a series of luncheons for judges and new attorneys. “The judges enjoyed it as much as the attorneys,” she said.

Krisel’s goals for the future include continuing the Bar Association’s outreach to the public, such as free consultations for senior citizens and people facing bankruptcy. “We’re a lot more than just a membership organization for attorneys,” she said. “We’re responsible for helping the public and we take that very seriously.”

Her other goals involve innovation inclusion of government attorneys and continuing financial support for the Bar Association building.