Overview and Vision
The Schulman Law Firm is a New York-based law firm that focuses on serving your business needs, under multiple legal regimes inside and outside of New York. We strive to be a firm of first choice for clients seeking sophisticated, high-value legal services. The twin watchwords are judgment and creativity.
While The Schulman Law Firm offers an extensive range of legal services across numerous industries, our core areas of practice are litigation and arbitration, bankruptcy/creditors rights, corporate transactions, compliance (including AML, bribery, and other matters), employment law, securities law, broker/dealer compliance, and intellectual property.
Our clients include US and foreign public and private companies, and entrepreneurs, in a variety of industries, including finance (banking, factoring, funds and alternative investments), oil/gas, and insurance/reinsurance.
The Schulman Law Firm has a flexible and entrepreneurial culture. Our focus is long-term relationships, learning our clients' business objectives, and fostering our clients -- who are by far our largest source of referrals.
While the bulk of our work is billed on a traditional hourly basis, we pride ourselves in being flexible, and we have agreed to a number of non-traditional fee arrangements, including monthly fixed price retainers, contingency fees, and modified mixed contingency/hourly fee arrangements. We also have agreed to handle various corporate transactions based on a fee that is calculated as a percentage of the amount of the transaction.
Law is a service profession. Every day, we need to earn and burnish our reputation as trusted business advisors and to prove our value by the results we achieve for our clients.
Choosing Legal Counsel
On many occasions, clients have asked us what they should look for in legal counsel. There are multiple factors to be considered; we believe we distinguish ourselves from other counsel by our creativity and judgment, and dedication to analyzing and accomplishing the clients' business goals. The factors we think important:
- Hire an attorney, not a law firm. Ultimately, the practice of law is a personal service, provided by a particular attorney to a client. There are many fine law firms in the world; your case will be handled by an attorney, not a firm.
- Judgment. Your lawyers need to understand your business, and what business goal you are seeking to achieve. Judgment is required to analyze the right course of action to achieve your goals in the most effective and efficient manner, balancing constraints (time, cost, diversion of business focus, etc.) Intelligence is important, but judgment is critical.
- Experience. Particularly in the specific area of your need.
- Efficiency. Smaller firms can be more efficient, given technological advances (e.g., computerized research rather than huge law libraries), and staffing cases with experienced lawyers, not young attorneys who are incentivized by large bonuses if they bill thousands of hours.
- Responsiveness. Law is a service industry. Your lawyer needs to respond to your needs, on your schedule. You need to know the status, and to participate in the decision-making process.
- Flexibility. Willingness to structure a fee, or to pursue a matter to meet a client's needs and desires. This also goes to creativity, discussed below.
- Passion and dedication. This is not just a job. There needs to be dedication to the client, and to the work.
- Trust. You must believe that your attorney's sole interest is your interest, not his or her economic interest.
- Creativity. In our decades of experience, both at law firms, and in-house, we have found that most factors can be met by many lawyers; but it is rarer than a blue moon to find lawyers who are creative in their approach to matters. Creativity combined with intelligence and good judgment is what distinguishes great attorneys from their peers.
In short, you should be looking for an attorney whom you trust, and who has the judgment, creativity, experience, passion, resources, and abilities needed both to meet your needs and to exceed your expectations.
The Schulman Law Firm LLP
646.225.6600
djs@djslf.com
The Cunard Building
25 Broadway, 9th Floor
New York, New York 10004