On the third floor of Seton Hall Law School is a suite that bears the Dunican family name—not Patrick C. Dunican Jr.’s name alone, but his family’s. The distinction, he will tell you, is everything. “It’s not about Patrick,” he says. For a devoted family man widely regarded as one of New Jersey’s most influential lawyers, that deflection is not false modesty. It is the organizing principle of a life built on something more durable than ambition: meaning and purpose.
Those two words come quickly when Dunican is asked why he returned to practice at Connell Foley LLP in early 2026 after nearly two years away. “I came back for two reasons,” he says. “Meaning and purpose. I just wanted to help people. That’s it.” It is a spare answer for a man who steered Gibbons P.C. through the 2008 financial crisis and a global pandemic. Dunican has always operated from a moral core that makes complicated matters seem clear.
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