by Robert M. Paolini, Esq.
PRESIDENT’S COLUMN Interview with David Fenster
On July 19th this year, VBA Executive Director Bob Paolini sat down with incoming VBA President David Fenster at the VBA office in Montpelier.
Bob Paolini: Dave, I have always sat down with incoming presidents and had a general conversation with them, so that folks around the state can get to know them a little bit better. Clearly, most of us know that you are the Addison County State’s Attorney, but give us a little history as to how you got there. You are originally from New Jersey? Dave Fenster: Yes, I am.
BP: Law School in New York City? DF: Yes.
BP: Where was that? DF: I went to Cardozo School of Law. I graduated in 1992. I grew up in New Jer- sey, and I went to college at the University of Vermont. I was there for four years of col- lege, and really enjoyed living in Vermont. So, after I graduated from law school, I clerked for one year for a judge in the New Jersey family court and moved up to Man- chester, Vermont. I did not have a job so I applied to the Bennington state’s attorney, the Windham state’s attorney, and the Rut- land state’s attorney offices to do a free in- ternship to get my clerkship done.
BP: Which at the time was six months? DF: Yes, at the time it was six months. I started in Windham, and about a month later I got a call from Bennington, saying that they would also sponsor me, and the commute was half the distance. I wasn’t getting paid, so I moved to Bennington. There was also an opening there at the time. After about a month or so, I was of- fered a job. I was in Bennington as a dep- uty state’s attorney for about eleven and a half years.
BP: Alright, so let’s go backwards. Were you admitted in either New York or New Jersey? DF: I was admitted in New Jersey. Ac-
tually, I graduated from law school and I took the Vermont bar first, that first sum- mer out of law school, knowing I wanted to move back to Vermont. After I passed the Vermont bar, I sat for the New Jersey bar in February, just as a precaution. My fa- ther and grandfather were both lawyers in New Jersey and I had a lot of contacts in the state. I was afraid that if I couldn’t find
www.vtbar.org
a job in Vermont, I would need a place to go to find a job. I passed New Jersey and was sworn in there before I was admitted in Vermont because I still needed to fulfill the Vermont clerkship requirement.
BP: Right. Who was the Bennington
state’s attorney when you started? DF: Bill Wright. I worked there from 1993 to 2005.
BP: And you decided to leave? DF: Yes, I did. At that time my close friend, Bob Scanlon, was a partner at Barr, Sternberg, Moss, Lawrence, Silver, Salton- stall & Scanlon. He and I had been friends for years and we had joked over the years about getting him into the state’s attor- ney’s office to work with me; and at times about me going the other way. Eventual- ly, he talked me into coming to join him at Barr Sternberg, and I did in July of 2005.
BP: And what kind of work did you do
there? DF: I started out doing a lot of fami- ly court. I did some criminal court, but at the time, David Silver, Bob Scanlon, and Steve Saltonstall were doing a lot of crimi- nal court work, so that area was pretty well covered. They really needed someone to help out in family law, to help out Peter Lawrence with the work that he had go- ing on in family court. I was taking a lot of family court cases. I did mostly family court and I took some criminal court cases when needed.
BP: You did some civil work too? DF: I did. I eventually started to do more and more civil work. I started to do less family and criminal court work and started to do more civil work. I did some person- al injury work, some contract litigation, and started to develop a practice involving civil litigation of different kinds. When I even- tually left Barr Sternberg, I was doing a lot more civil work than family or criminal.
BP: But it seems as though your real love was practicing in the criminal courts? DF: It’s true. In fact, as I said earlier, my father and grandfather were lawyers, but I didn’t have any intentions of becoming a lawyer when I went to college. When I was
THE VERMONT BAR JOURNAL • FALL 2013
in college, for one of my sociology courses I read the book, The Death Of Innocence, which people may be familiar with, involv- ing the murder and sexual assault cases in Chittenden County that led to big changes in Vermont juvenile law. The police work, the prosecution work, the investigative work, and the court work—all of that just fascinated me. That is what made me de- cide that I wanted to become a lawyer. At that point, I decided to go to law school and probably be a prosecutor. When I went to law school, I was lucky enough to be- come involved in an externship program at Cardozo where I became a student as- sistant district attorney for half of my last year of law school. I did that because I re- ally wanted to do prosecution work. When I came to Vermont, I was lucky enough to do that for a long time. But then I thought I wanted to try something else, and I had a good friend with whom I had talked about building a practice together, so I made the switch. Unfortunately, Bob passed away several months later, in October. After Bob passed away things became a little less clear about what I was going to be doing in private practice. Although I had great law partners, and they were great people to work with, Bob’s death changed a lot of things for me. When the state’s attorney’s position opened in Addison County after John Quinn retired, I decided to put my name in for consideration.
BP: Now that is kind of a big move. You
were living in Manchester at the time? DF: No, actually, I moved from Manches- ter to Bennington, and then out to Shafts- bury, which is a town just north of Benning- ton.
BP: So John Quinn retired about three or four years ago now? DF: He retired in August of 2009.
BP: Four years ago. I remember that. I
remember that Governor Douglas at the time, needed to appoint a successor be-
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