In People v. Felder (47 N.Y.2d 287, 391 N.E.2d 1274, 418 N.Y.S.2d 295 1979), the Court held that where the defendant in a criminal proceeding is unwittingly represented by a nonlawyer who holds himself out to be a licensed attorney-at-law, the defendant's right to counsel, as guaranteed by the Federal and New York State Constitutions, is violated, and his conviction must be set aside regardless of whether defendant was prejudiced by the representation. Felder involved four criminal cases in which each of the defendants was represented by one who was not and had never been admitted to practice law in New York or any other jurisdiction. Nor did this imposter ever satisfy the prerequisites for the practice of law (e.g., he never completed law school). Consistent with its holding that prejudice is irrelevant in a case involving representation by one not licensed to practice law and given the fundamental nature of the right to counsel, this Court concluded that the harmless error standard has no application to a case involving the right to counsel. This Court stated: " 'The right to have the assistance of counsel is too fundamental and absolute to allow courts to indulge in nice calculations as to the amount of prejudice arising from its denial.' Notions of prejudicial impact, overwhelming evidence of guilt and the like, which are the underpinnings of the constitutional harmless error doctrine, are significant in the context of trial errors, e.g., the admission of improperly seized evidence or the improper admission of the confession of a codefendant who did not take the stand. A denial of the right to assistance of counsel, however, not unlike prosecutorial misconduct, misconduct on the part of the Trial Judge or denial of a public trial, invalidates the trial. As the Supreme Court has recently said, 'this Court has concluded that the assistance of counsel is among those "constitutional rights so basic to a fair trial that their infraction can never be treated as harmless error." ' " (Felder, 47 N.Y.2d at 296.)