260 Madison Avenue, 17th Floor, New York, New York 10016
The Philosophy of Our Practice
The hallmark of our philosophy is asking (and reevaluating throughout the representation of the client)
Four Basic Questions:
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What is the objective to be achieved?
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Is litigation the most effective way to achieve it?
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Is the cost of litigation (both financial and otherwise) justified by the potential reward? and
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If litigation is the answer, what specific litigation steps will most effectively achieve the desired result?
The goal in other words, is not litigation for litigation's sake; we have frequently advised clients that their interests would be best served by not initiating litigation and instead exploring an alternative way to resolve their dispute. Whether or not you retain our Firm, we urge you to ask (and re-ask on a periodic basis) these four questions of your attorney throughout the representation.
Clients' Input
We have come to understand, after more than forty years of practice, that clients (as the individuals with the most direct knowledge of the facts and the persons most immediately impacted by the dispute) very often have valuable insights and suggestions about how the litigation or a transaction should be conducted. Far too many attorneys treat clients and their concerns as an inconvenience and necessary evil of the practice of law; we never do. For that reason, we always return client emails and telephone calls promptly and consider all client suggestions and comments.
A Word About Size
Clients are sometimes concerned about retaining a small firm when the opposing party may be represented by a much larger firm. For a number of reasons, we have always considered our rather modest size as an advantage, rather than as a liability. For one thing, a small firm results in significantly reduced legal fees for the client; we simply do not have layers of lawyers to assign as a "team" to a matter. Second, because there is no hierarchy at the Firm, the "partners in charge" (Mr. Feit and/or Mr. Blander) do everything and know everything about the case. In the rare instances when it is necessary (such as a case with heavy document review), we retain contract attorneys to assist us with these discrete tasks under our supervision (which also represents a potential substantial cost savings to the client).
To be sure, neither of these advantages would matter if we were unable to effectively litigate and protect the interests of our clients. But this has never been a problem. Indeed, in a substantial portion of our cases, our adversary is significantly larger and is often a "national law firm" (with hundreds, if not thousands, of attorneys). To put it bluntly, the issue is not the number of attorneys who go to court, work on a deal or prepare the brief. Rather, it is the quality of the product and the representation, which is a function of the intelligence, dedication, experience, creativity and hard work of the attorney involved.