Mark Funk leads Monroe County Bar with fresh vision

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If Mark D. Funk had a better experience as a student teacher for middle schoolers someone else might be chairman of the Monroe County Bar Association today.

Funk, whose term as leader of the MCBA officially started on July 1, received a bachelor’s degree in secondary education at the State University of New York at Oswego.

“I wanted to be a high school social studies teacher and high school football coach. That was kind of my career goal at the time,” Funk said, during an interview in his office as Monroe County’s assigned counsel administrator.

In the early 1990s, Funk’s father asked him if he ever considered being a lawyer.

“I distinctly remember I said: ‘I don’t want to be a lawyer. They’re a dime a dozen.’ And my father said: ‘Not if you’re a good one,’ ” Funk recalled.

“I kind of took it as a challenge to be a good lawyer,” he said, and he started researching law schools and wound up earning his law degree at the University of Dayton Law School, in Dayton, Ohio.

“When I student taught my last semester in college I student taught seventh graders the first part of the semester, and then high schoolers the second part of the semester, and I absolutely hated teaching seventh grade social studies and I decided to go to law school,” Funk said.

The second part of the semester he taught high schoolers, which he enjoyed.

“I think if I did that first I may be a high school social studies teacher today instead of a lawyer,” he said.

Pay it forward

Serving as MCBA chairman is Funk’s way of thanking the organization for the support it has provided to him and his legal career over the years.

“It’s really a matter of giving back to the Bar Association, to the legal community,” he said.

“When I was admitted to practice, at the time I was working stocking shelves at Tops Supermarket, from midnight to 8:30 a.m.,” Funk said.

“I didn’t have a legal job. I really didn’t know too many people in the legal community, and I joined the Bar Association really to kind of meet people and things like that,” he said.

“And I think the Bar Association really came through for me,” Funk said.

“So, I’ve always thought that being a member of the Bar Association was very important, that I could pay it forward so to speak. It’s a way for me to give back to the Bar Association for all the good stuff that it has done for me in my legal career,” he said.

Networking is important

Although most of his career has been focused on criminal defense work, that was not what he initially intended.

“If you asked me in law school what I did not want to do I would have told you criminal defense and family law and that’s what I’ve been doing for almost 30 years. That’s where the opportunities presented themselves,” he said.

But he acknowledged it’s getting harder to make those sorts of connections.

“We’re really working hard to revive the criminal justice section of the Bar Association to get more people involved, to get younger people involved,” he said.

Membership at the Bar Association has been declining for years, especially among younger lawyers.

“I’m trying to get the word out for younger lawyers that networking is important, and Bar Association activity is important to meet people,” he said.

“Every opportunity I’ve ever had as a lawyer has been because I knew somebody … Having those connections and that networking opportunity are huge,” he said.

The Bar Association has launched several initiatives aimed at getting members in the same room together.

One Saturday a month they host a meetup at Best Coffee at the Rochester Public Market. The Bar Association hosts nature walks at Monroe County parks. Yoga classes for members are held monthly just to get people in the same room together.

And the Bar Association offers a Leadership Academy that runs from February to June to develop potential future leaders of the Bar Association.

Funk’s agenda as chairman includes reviving the lawyer succession registry, a program to make sure that attorneys, clients, and their files are taken care of if an attorney passes away or can’t practice law anymore.

“We’re planning outreach regarding that to get attorneys to get this on their front burner, sign up for this,” he said.

Funk also is interested in documenting the history of the Bar Association. He would like to contact past chairmans to gather stories of their time as chairman of the Bar Association and their legal careers.

A passion for helping people

Funk’s initiatives at the Assigned Counsel Program have demonstrated his ability to reinvigorate an organization.

There are about 140 attorneys on the trial-level criminal and family court panels and about 30 other attorneys on our appellate panel.

Two and a half years ago Funk hired Scott Young as resource attorney who is available to answer questions for assigned counsel panel attorneys, help with research and in other ways.

“I think he has a passion for helping people and that’s why he’s done so much with the indigent defense community,” Young said.

Funk spent almost seven years as Monroe County Conflict Defender before becoming the Assigned Counsel Program administrator in October 2016.

Before Funk took over, panel attorneys would get an assignment, “and that was it,” Young said.

“There were no resources available to you,” Young said.

“But with Mark as head of the Assigned Counsel program our goal is to start to establish a collaborative or community-based idea,” Young said.

“I’m here to assist attorneys in any way I can — to help them find an expert, to sit down and do a case conference, prepare cases for trial, or, if they have a research issue, they can give me a call,” he said.

None of that was available before Funk took over.

“I think Mark’s visions and ideas are just awesome,” Young said.

In January, attorney Peter Pullano was hired as training and mentorship coordinator for the Assigned Counsel program. His job is to plan training programs for our panel attorneys, but also to run a mentorship program and mentor inexperienced attorneys.

“Between the three of us, we have over 100 Years of criminal defense experience and I’m the baby of the group with only like 29 years of experience,” Funk said.

Pullano has known Funk for 30 years.

“His passion for criminal defense is what I learned about him earlier and that’s continued for his whole career,” Pullano said.

“I was a practitioner handling assigned counsel cases, so I got to see firsthand when he took over the head of the office just how much more he was able to do for every attorney who takes these kinds of cases,” Pullano said.

“Mark has offered all sorts of resources and programs, things that just make our jobs easier and make us better,” Pullano said.

“Maybe most importantly, he’s an attorney who has dedicated his life to providing legal services to the poor. It is one of those things that we as attorneys always to make need to make sure that we’re doing,” Pullano said.

Funk has even added a clothes closet for clients who don’t have proper attire for court appearances.

The program also offers panel attorneys free access to Westlaw legal research materials online, while beefing up the physical Library of legal reference books and materials.

There are even workstations for attorneys who need somewhere to sit and make phone calls.

“Some of our attorneys don’t really have great office space so we have meeting rooms where they can meet with their clients,” Funk said.

And Funk is producing a monthly newsletter and monthly case law updates that summarize new court decisions of significance.

He also is working on getting the program certified to provide continuing legal education programs for panel attorneys.

The program also hosts a monthly roundtable discussion where we just pick a topic and open it up to our assigned counsel panel attorneys by Zoom and discuss the topic.

And Funk recently hired the first staff sentencing advocate, a position created to assist lawyers in advocating for sentencing.

The advocates help attorneys get records that might support an argument for a lower sentence.

They will assist the attorneys getting enough information to the court to advocate for better treatment of the client.

“We are offering social workers and paralegal support for the attorneys to work with clients,” said Funk, who explained the initiative is part of a concept called holistic representation.

“What were ultimately hoping is to be able to get some assistance to the clients in addition to the legal representation to address the problems that brought them into court in the first place,” he said.

There has been some resistance from lawyers.

“We’ve heard from folks saying, I’m not a social worker, I’m a lawyer,’ and things like that,” Funk said.

“I get it,” Funk said. “I’m still trying to beef up our stable of social workers and paralegals and things to make it as easy for the attorneys to engage these folks as possible,” he said.

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