Kathleen Fennelly ‘86 Leads with Kindness

The Seton Hall Law alumna and 2026 St. Thomas More Medal honoree has built a career in litigation and service while keeping family and community at the center.

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Kathleen N. Fennelly still has the Black’s Law Dictionary her colleagues at a French investment bank gave her when she left the firm to attend law school in 1983. More than four decades later, the well-worn book is a reminder of an unexpected path into law—from a French major at Fairfield University to a distinguished career in litigation, leadership in the New Jersey bar and recognition as a 2026 St. Thomas More Medal honoree at this year’s Red Mass in Newark.

Fennelly entered Seton Hall Law a year later than many of her classmates and approached it with the discipline she had developed in the working world. “I got up, went to school and, if I didn’t have a class, I was in the library,” she said.

After graduating in 1986, Fennelly joined Graham Curtin in Morristown in 1987 and spent more than three decades there before joining McElroy Deutsch, Mulvaney & Carpenter in 2018, with some of her Graham Curtin colleagues. She is now a partner and practice group co-manager of the firm’s Commercial Litigation Practice Group, handling commercial litigation, consumer fraud and class-action defense, and estate and guardianship matters.

Never subscribing to the stereotypical image of the aggressive courtroom lawyer, Fennelly says effective advocacy is grounded in treating people with respect. “Courtroom drama has nothing to do with what I wanted to practice,” she said. “I think you can be just as effective being nice as being a tiger. Being kind doesn’t mean I’m a pushover.”

That philosophy is reflected in the cases she has chosen, from adoptions to helping families navigate dementia, and serving as a guardian for vulnerable people. “That’s a huge responsibility,” she said of her guardianship work. “I’m making decisions on their behalf and in their best interests.” She counts the adoption cases among “some of the happiest things I’ve ever done,” recalling “the effect that you can have on everyday people by just doing those little things.”

That same belief in the law’s impact on everyday lives has guided Fennelly’s service to the profession. She served as president of the Morris County Bar Association in 1997 and later as a trustee of the New Jersey State Bar Association, including six years on its board.

Her proudest professional chapter, she said, was leading the New Jersey State Bar Foundation, the association’s philanthropic and educational arm, where mock trial competitions, scholarships and outreach programs showed her how lawyers can make a difference far beyond the courtroom.

“You don’t appreciate the scope of how law affects everyone’s daily lives,” she said. “That’s what I got to promote.” Her experience also reinforced what she had seen throughout her career: The lawyers she admired were not “sharks”—the aggressive legal stereotype. “You hear about the sharks and the people who are just out for the money,” she said. “That’s not what I saw.”

Fennelly credits her father, a Morristown steamfitter who never attended college, with a principle that has stayed with her: “Be true to who you are.” She carried that advice into a family deeply connected to the law.

Thomas S. Fennelly, her husband and a Seton Hall Law graduate, is also a distinguished lawyer. After 34 years as an Essex County assistant prosecutor—including leading the homicide squad and overseeing major crimes and narcotics—he became a Superior Court judge last year. Tom and Kathleen were fortunate to be able to keep home, work and school within a one-mile triangle while raising their children.

Their daughter, Claire, followed her parents to Seton Hall Law and is beginning her second year at a New York firm. Their son, Tommy, is an investigative aide in the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office, working toward becoming an investigator. Claire and Tommy grew up watching both parents balance demanding careers with family and community and saw the public purpose of the law through their father’s work protecting victims and pursuing justice.

That commitment to community continues at Assumption Church in Morristown, where Fennelly was baptized and married and where she leads the lector ministry and serves on the parish's finance council.
When Dean Ronald Weich called to tell her she had been selected to receive the St. Thomas More Medal, Fennelly was caught completely off guard. “I almost didn’t understand what he was saying,” she said. “I couldn’t process it.”

The honor has given her a chance to reflect on a career that was never mapped out from the start—one built instead through a series of choices, some large, some seemingly small. It’s the advice she now offers law students: “Make the big decisions, but don’t neglect the little ones. You never know how your path could turn on saying yes or no to something.”

She has also learned that helping others requires knowing when to set limits. “I like to help people, but sometimes you just can’t,” she said. “Learning to say no—period, end of sentence, no explanation—was important.”

Fennelly also wants students to leave room for something that can be easy to lose in a demanding profession: joy. “Don’t take yourself too seriously,” she said. “It’s OK to look for the joy in something.”
Make important choices. Pay attention to the small ones. Stay true to who you are. “It’ll be worth the ride at the end.”