Diana Balasis, Esq.

Director, Paralegal Studies Program

     I am the Director of Fairleigh Dickinson University's Paralegal Studies Program and also serve on it's Board of Advisors. The Program is part of the Continuing Education Department of the New College of General and Continuing Studies headed by Dean Kenneth T. Verhrkens. The Program has received reaccreditation from the American Bar Association (ABA) in 2001 and has been ABA accredited for over a decade. The Program is well known in the legal community throughout New Jersey and is offered both in the day and evening on the Florham/Madison and Teaneck/Hackensack Campuses. The Course curriculum consists of nine classes including Civil Litigation, Criminal Law, Family Law, Legal Research and Writing, Ethics, Corporate Law, Real Estate and Mortgages, Estates, Trusts and Wills and a legal specialty course. I have been instrumental in bringing new focus to the Program by incorporating the latest law office software into the cirriculum and initiating new legal specialty courses including Immigration Law, Intellectual Property, Bankruptcy, Environmental Law, Employment Law, Advanced Contracts, New York Practice and Procedure, Alternative Dispute Resolution, Elder Care Law, among others.

     I am an honors graduate of Fairleigh Dickinson University, graduating Magna Cum Laude, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology, 1992, and received the Maxwell Becton College of Liberal Arts Dean's Award upon graduation.

     I am also a graduate of Rutgers University, School of Law, where I received a Juris Doctor degree in 1996. I worked as a paralegal in the branch office of Mudge Rose Guthrie Alexander & Ferdon, P.C. while simultaneously attending Rutgers Law School in the evening. Upon graduating law school, I worked as a Judicial Law Clerk for the Honorable Graham T. Ross, Presiding Superior Court Judge in Somerset County and practiced law for several years at the law firms of Franzblau Dratch, P.C., Livingston, NJ, and Budd Larner Gross Rosenbaum Greenberg & Sade, P.C., Short Hills, NJ, specializing in civil litigation and family law, before joining the University as an adjunct faculty member and Director of the Paralegal Studies Program. I also teach the American Experience in the University's Core Program.

     As far as professional memberships, I am a member of the Family Law Section of the New Jersey State Bar Association and have recently been appointed to the Committee on Paralegal Education. The activities of this Committee play an important role in helping to advance the interests of the legal profession and the public at large.

Links of interest:

Paralegal Studies Program Web Page

Email address: balasis@fdu.edu