Julia Perles

1951-1953

Julia Perles graduated from Brooklyn Law School in 1937. She is widely considered to have played the leading role as chair of the committee that brought about the passage of New York State’s equitable  distribution law, which went into effect in 1980. This law brought a revolutionary change in the practice of matrimonial law and in the rights of marital partners. Until her death in 1998, Ms. Perles was affiliated with Phillips Nizer Benjamin Krim and Ballon, LLP, where she became a partner in 1970 and headed the firm’s matrimonial practice. Before that, she was an associate at Schwartz & Froehlich from 1942 to 1952, and then a partner at Greenbaum Wolff & Ernst. Ms. Perles was also a fellow of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers and a member of the ”Dirty Thirty,” an organization of American lawyers who were prominent in the field of matrimonial law.