Harris, Keenan & Goldfarb PLLC

Seth Harris is the founding partner of Harris Keenan & Goldfarb. He started the practice in 2002 after partnering with Kay Burns for several years under the firm name Burns & Harris.

Mr. Harris decided he wanted to be a lawyer when he was eight years old. From a young age, he knew he would spend his adult life trying cases in court.

After graduating from Vassar College in 1985, he attended law school at Hofstra and graduated in 1987.

Mr. Harris began his legal career with the Legal Aid Society, criminal defense division of Bronx County. As a staff attorney, he tried many criminal cases for indigent people, including his first jury trial, a DWI case that overturned 2000 prior convictions in NYC after proving a lack of scientific integrity with ampule solutions in breathalyzer machines. In 1989 and 1990, he volunteered and taught trial practice to seventh graders in the Bronx, encouraging them to go to law school.

After leaving the Legal Aid Society in 1990, Mr. Harris started working as an associate at Damashek, Godosky & Gentile, a personal injury law firm in Manhattan. There, Mr. Harris tried his first 10 personal injury cases.

Since then, Mr. Harris has tried over 200 hundred cases to verdict and is proud of winning most of them. Additionally, he has settled over 200 cases during trial. For the last decade, he has had more verdicts in New York State than any other attorney currently practicing in New York. He attributes the success of Harris Keenan & Goldfarb to hard work and endless hours prepping for trial.

Mr. Harris has recently joined the faculty at New York Law School as a Professor in trial practice. He will be teaching the art of cross examination next semester.

For many years, Mr. Harris served as an officer of the New York State Trial Lawyers Association. He lobbied for new laws to help plaintiffs get justice, including bills to raise auto insurance limits and the Grieving Family Act.

Recently, he started sponsoring the Mock Trial Program at New York Law School. He also served as a trial coach to NYLS students since 2019. He has provided several lectures between 2000 and 2010 on USC Section 1983, including police brutality, false arrest, false imprisonment and malicious prosecution. He has lectured at both Hofstra and NYLS on trial practice and the advantages of a small firm practice over Big Law.