NATALIE M. HIOTT-LEVINE

Attorney-at-Law
Investigator
Trainer
Special Needs Advocate
Bilingual (English/Spanish)

EXPERIENCE

Natalie M. Hiott-Levine, Esq. is Of Counsel to the Law Office of Kirsten Scheurer Branigan. She was briefly of counsel to KSBranigan Law P.C. after leaving big law and is very excited to be returning to practice here.

Natalie spent a decade litigating complex commercial matters in both federal and state courts. She began practice at Wilentz Goldman & Spitzer PA, in Woodbridge, NJ, and then joined the New York office of Mayer Brown as a third-year associate. At Wilentz, she first practiced as a school board attorney, and later in the areas of commercial litigation and employment discrimination. At Mayer Brown, she practiced complex commercial litigation for eight years, first full-time and later on a reduced schedule. Natalie has represented accounting and consulting firms, pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers, engineering and construction companies, commercial and industrial property owners, hotels, banks, a health insurer, and a foreign government in civil litigations involving various claims including allegations of breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty, professional malpractice, fraud, misrepresentation, negligence, product liability, patent infringement, environmental contamination, and antitrust violations.

After Mayer Brown, Natalie spent seven years working with the nonprofit, Project for Attorney Retention (PAR), an initiative of the Center for WorkLife Law. She began as Assistant Director of PAR and was the Senior Director of Membership when she left the organization. Among other things, her work included identifying and recommending best practices for the advancement and retention of women and other attorneys seeking work/life balance and identifying and exploring new models of legal practice. In 2008, she worked with the Rutgers Center for Women & Work to research and draft a report on the status of women in the law in New Jersey for the New Jersey Commission on Gender Parity.

With PAR’s Co-Director, Natalie co-authored the essay, “A New Path to Excellence: Balanced Hours 101,” which appears as a chapter in the ABA’s book, Raising the Bar: Real World Solutions for a Troubled Profession, published in 2007. With Kirsten Scheurer Branigan, she also co-authored the article, “Women in the Legal Profession: The Quest to Overcome Barriers to Advancement Continues,” which appeared in Commerce Magazine (Summer 2006).
In addition to supervising research by UC Law San Francisco law students while with PAR, Natalie has also taught undergraduates. In 2010, when a friend asked if she would consider filling in for a sick colleague just days before the spring semester started, Natalie became an adjunct professor for the semester, teaching Introduction to Law and Contracts in the Business Law and Accountancy Department of St. Peter’s College in New Jersey.

Over the years, Natalie has been very active in numerous women’s and diversity initiatives and organizations in New Jersey and New York. She belongs to several sections of the New Jersey State Bar Association and is a member of the New Jersey Women Lawyers Association, where she served as Co-Director of Best Practices on its Board of Trustees from 2006 until 2012. Natalie has also held leadership positions in New York bar associations including New York State Bar Association (NYSBA) and New York County Lawyers Association (NYCLA). Between 2004 and 2006, she co-chaired the programming subcommittee of the NYSBA’s Committee on Women in the Law and chaired two of the Committee’s programs at the NYSBA annual meeting: “The Value of Diversity: Creating a Win-Win Environment for Women and Minority Attorneys AND Their Employers” (2005), and “Family Responsibilities: Legal Issues & Trends, Rights & Remedies” (2007). Natalie was also an active member of NYCLA’s Women’s Rights Committee and co-chaired its “Women in the Law: Strategies for Success” programming series in 2006-2007. During that time, Natalie also served on the executive board of NYU’s Law Alumni of Color Association as a class representative and co-chair of its Membership and Outreach Committee.

Natalie received her JD from New York University School of Law in 1995. While at NYU Law, she was the Developments Editor of the Journal of International Law and Politics. As an undergraduate at Douglass College of Rutgers University, Natalie was a Douglass Scholar and graduated in 1992, Phi Beta Kappa, with a B.A. in Political Science, magna cum laude, and a minor in English. She lives in Millburn, NJ, with her husband and three sons, where she has actively volunteered and served in various leadership positions in the school district. Some past leadership positions include PTO Treasurer, PTO President, School District Strategic Planning Committee, and PTO Conference Steering Committee for a new central 5th grade school.

But aside from her role as mother of three sons, she is most proud of the volunteer work she has done on behalf of students and young adults with special needs and their families for the past 20 years. For ten of those years, she served as a representative on the Special Education Parents Advisory Council (SEPAC). Prior to that, Natalie served on the executive boards of special education parent support groups and the district’s Caring Kids Committee. Natalie and her husband also spent years serving on the Family Advisory Council of the Sala Institute for Child and Family Centered Care for Hassenfeld Children’s Hospital at NYU Langone from 2015 to 2021, where they shared personal experiences and insights in order to better the experiences of future pediatric patients and their families.

Today, Natalie continues her work with Caring Kids as a presenter and puppeteer to educate younger students about various physical disabilities, neurodiversity, and bullying. Caring Kids is a district-wide, parent-run group, whose mission is to help children grow into compassionate, positive and empowered members of society through character education programs in the schools and community events. Its mantra is to treat everyone with caring, kindness and respect regardless of individual differences. She also supports her oldest son Zach in his Caring Kids presentations to third and fourth graders, where he explains and answers questions about living with visual impairment and physical disabilities. In addition, since 2021, she and Zach have become motivational speakers on the topics of inclusion of persons with disabilities in our schools and communities and the resilience of those individuals and their families in an autobiographical program entitled, “Differently Abled, Musically Inspired: A Young Man’s Journey to Inclusion & Resilience.” Together, they have presented for corporate diversity and inclusion initiatives and at libraries for special needs groups as well as the community-at-large.

CREDENTIALS

Education

New York University School of Law, J.D. (Developments Editor, Journal of International Law & Politics)
Douglass College, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, B.A. with High Honors in Political Science (Douglass Scholar, National Hispanic Scholar, Phi Beta Kappa, Pi Sigma Alpha)

Admitted to Practice

State of New Jersey (1995)
State of New York (1998)
United States District Court. District Court of New Jersey (1996)
United States District Court, Southern District of New York (1998)
United States District Court, Eastern District of New York (1998)

Leadership, Recognitions & Associations

NJSBA Member (2011 – present)
NYCLA Women’s Rights Committee Member (2005 – 2012), Co-Chair of Strategies for Success Series
New Jersey Women Lawyers Association Member (2006-present), Co-Director of Best Practices Committee (2006 – 2012)
NYSBA Committee on Women in Law (2004-2008), Co-Chair of Programming Subcommittee (2004-2006), Co-Chair of Annual Program (2005 & 2007)
NYU LACA (Law Alumni of Color Association), Executive Board, Co-Chair, Membership & Outreach Committee (2004 – 2006)

Community Service

Motivational Speaker, “Differently Abled, Musically Inspired: A Young Man’s Journey to Inclusion & Resilience”
Caring Kids Committee (2010 – present), Representative (2010-2012), Executive Board, Director of Peer Socialization (2012-2015), Presenter, Puppeteer
Millburn Township SEPAC (Special Education Parents Advisory Council) (2013-2023)
Sala Institute for Child and Family Centered Care for Hassenfeld Children’s Hospital, NYU Langone, Family Advisory Council (2015-2021)