John W. McConnell, the clerk of the Appellate Division, First Department, will become the court system’s top lawyer after Michael Colodner, the counsel for the past 26 years, retires. The changeover is expected to occur toward the end of the year. Mr. McConnell, 50, the First Department’s clerk since 2007, will be in charge of the 15-lawyer counsel’s office, which handles the court system’s legal affairs. First Department Presiding Justice Luis A. Gonzalez said in an interview yesterday that it is “99.9 percent certain” that Mr. McConnell’s replacement will be a court insider who is familiar with the court’s history and has institutional memory.
Prior to becoming the First Department’s clerk, Mr. McConnell, a civil litigator and appellate expert, spent nearly a decade at the New York Attorney General’s bureau of appeals and opinions, the last three as deputy solicitor general in charge of the bureau’s New York City office. He also spent nine years in private practice. In the mid-1990s, he was executive assistant to Justice Francis T. Murphy, then the First Department’s presiding justice.
