Rick Collins, a Founding Partner at Collins Gann McCloskey & Barry, was installed as the 117th President of the Nassau County Bar Association at the NCBA’s annual Installation ceremony on Tuesday, June 4, 2019, at Domus, the Home of the Association. Previously serving as NCBA President-Elect, Rick has been an active member of the NCBA for over 25 years.
The 2019 NCBA Installation ceremony was attended by nearly 200 attorneys, business professionals and community leaders. Also installed as NCBA officers at the June 4th ceremony were the following attorneys: Dorian R. Glover, President-Elect; Gregory S. Lisi, Vice President; Rosalia Baiamonte, Treasurer; Sanford Strenger, Secretary.
As president, Rick will focus on initiatives to make the Nassau County Bar Association stronger through unity and collaboration. He will be working to continue the current course of fiscal responsibility by NCBA leadership to ensure that the finances of the Association remain strong, and he is dedicated to increasing membership. He is a strong supporter of the WE CARE Fund, the NCBA’s charitable arm. Over the past 25 years, Rick has served the NCBA on a variety of committees, including as an elected Director and as Chair of the Long-Range Planning Committee and the Publications Committee. In 2001, he was honored with the NCBA President’s Award for his work as Editor-in-Chief in revamping the Nassau Lawyer. He has been active as a member of the Advisory Board of WE CARE, and continues to be a strong proponent of philanthropic and charitable endeavors.
Rick, a former Nassau County Assistant District Attorney, is an internationally-recognized legal authority on anabolic steroids and other performance-enhancing substances, and has built an active national law practice catering to clients in the bodybuilding, fitness and dietary supplement communities. He spearheads the firm’s national dietary supplements division to provide legal counsel to the supplement industry, and has handled matters involving DEA and FDA investigations from coast to coast. He also serves as the official legal advisor to the International Federation of Bodybuilding and as General Counsel to the International Society of Sports Nutrition.
For nearly a decade, Rick has been a legal trailblazer in advocating for a change in state law to allow for criminal record sealing in New York, and was instrumental in helping to make criminal record sealing a reality in New York. He serves as co-chairman of the New York State Bar Association Criminal Justice Section Sealing Committee and was the co-author of the committee’s Report and Recommendations to conditionally seal certain low-level criminal convictions in New York. As a result of the efforts of his committee and many others, New York State laws were changed in 2017 to allow judges the discretion to seal the criminal records of certain non-violent ex-offenders after ten years without further convictions. In addition, he was appointed to serve on a New York State Bar Association special committee created to address the issue of prisoner re-entry, examining problems that formerly incarcerated individuals face upon release from prison or jail and the kinds of services needed to help them lead productive lives. He also serves as Co-Chair of the American Bar Association Criminal Justice Section Committee on Reentry and Collateral Consequences. He is currently spearheading efforts in Washington to amend federal laws to afford those convicted of non-violent offenses in the U.S. District Courts a similar remedy as in our State courts.
In addition to his role at NCBA, Rick is active in a number of other professional organizations and philanthropic groups, including Warriors for a Cause, a local 501(c)(3) charity. He is a past president of the Criminal Courts Bar Association of Nassau County and of the Former Assistant District Attorneys of Nassau County, as well as an officer or member of numerous other state and national professional organizations including the American Bar Association, the New York State Bar Association, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and the New York State Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. He is an annual faculty member for the National Institute of Trial Advocacy and is on the adjunct faculty of Hofstra University School of Law. He is also an annual faculty member for the New York State Bar Association Young Lawyers’ Trial Academy, held each year at Cornell Law School.
Rick has been recognized as one of Long Island’s “50 Around 50” by the Long Island Business News and was selected as their recipient of the 2013 “Leadership in Law” award. He has also been named “Top Legal Eagle” 2018 Criminal Defense by PULSE magazine, has received the “In the Trenches Award” of the New York State Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and the Honorable Edward J. Hart, Jr., Memorial Award of the Fraternal Order of Court Officers, Nassau County. He has been named to the list of NY Metro Super Lawyers for the past four consecutive years, has an AV-rating from the Martindale-Hubbell directory of lawyers, and is listed in the Bar Register of Preeminent Lawyers. He is admitted to practice in New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Texas and the District of Columbia, along with various federal courts nationwide.
He has been interviewed as a legal authority in the film “Bigger, Stronger, Faster” (2008) and on national television talk and news shows, in talk radio interviews and by numerous online and print publications. The author of two popular books, he has contributed chapters to several texts on sports nutrition and co-authored a textbook chapter on adolescent use of performance-enhancing drugs. He frequently writes for various fitness publications on issues where health and fitness overlap with law and policy, and has been a monthly columnist for the nationally circulated Muscular Development magazine since 2001. He has also been a blogger for the Huffington Post Crime Section on issues surrounding criminal law.
We congratulate Rick and all Officers on this honor. For photos of the Installation ceremony, visit our Facebook page and the Nassau County Bar Association Facebook page. In addition, for more information about Rick Collins, or to learn more about the firm’s practice areas, call us at(516) 218-5131.
