Practice Areas

Our firm offers the combined legal expertise of our attorneys to provide our clients with effective, results-oriented legal services in several practice areas:

Integrated Legal Expertise and Collaboration

Matrimonial and Family

Our Matrimonial and Family practice represents prominent and high net worth clients in all aspects of their marital and family law needs. We take pride in our demonstrated ability to successfully manage the myriad of complex circumstances raised in our clients’ matters, including:

  • Prenuptial agreements
  • Divorce
  • Custody
  • Child-related issues
  • Complex separate property claims
  • Public and private equity entitlements
  • Business and financial issues

Our firm has an outstanding reputation and successful track record in litigated matrimonial cases, at trial and on appeal. Mr. Mantel, who heads our Matrimonial Practice, was elected President of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, New York Chapter, and is recognized by New York’s Bar as a preeminent leader in this complex and specialized field.

Due to our firm’s reputation and our financial and analytical skills, we have been successful in reaching favorable settlements for the vast majority of our matrimonial clients. Quite often, as a result of our successful representation of a matrimonial client, we are asked to remain as a trusted counselor and advisor in our clients’ business, financial, and personal affairs. Earning our clients’ respect and trust is the greatest testament to our Matrimonial Practice.

In a case widely cited and adopted as leading case law authority, we successfully won the dismissal of our client’s wife’s attempt to remain in New York with custody of three young children, and in the related Federal Hague Convention action, we were successful in having the father retain custody and return with the children to their home in Italy.

Litigation

Our Litigation practice represents clients in such diverse matters as:

  • Commercial matters
  • Loan enforcement
  • Construction matters
  • Business disputes
  • Employment disputes
  • Surrogate’s Court
  • Religious institutions
  • Mortgage foreclosures
  • Corporate shareholder derivative actions
  • Real estate matters
  • Corporate dissolutions
  • Copyright matters
  • Securities brokerage
We represent clients in all forums, including State and Federal trial and appellate courts, arbitration panels, and administrative agencies.

Our firm represented a Russian television production company, and we were successful in securing the dismissal of copyright infringement and related claims.

Lending, Foreclosure and Loan Enforcement

Our Lending, Foreclosure and Loan Enforcement practice includes the representation of middle-market lenders in a variety of financing transactions, including working capital lines of credit, term-loans, asset-based loans and real estate loans. We also represent borrowers in loan transactions.

Our representation of lenders also extends to serving as counsel in connection with the purchase or sale of debt, restructuring, work-out transactions, and the enforcement of the rights of lenders, including commercial mortgage foreclosure proceedings and bankruptcy lift-stay proceedings.

Our firm represented the lender in a mortgage foreclosure proceeding, and we were successful in convincing the appellate court to reverse the lower court and find that our client was entitled to summary judgment on the complaint and the appointment of a referee to compute the sums due.

White Collar Criminal Defense

Our White Collar Criminal Defense practice provides counsel to individuals charged with federal or state crimes. We have considerable expertise in defending a wide-array of charges, including:

  • Income tax and sales tax evasion
  • Bribery
  • Extortion and embezzlement
  • RICO
  • Fraud and forgery
  • Bid rigging
  • Securities fraud
  • Bank fraud

We were able to set aside criminal sales tax convictions and won an acquittal for our client charged with commercial bribery, scheming to defraud, and anti-trust crimes.

Our firm set aside the conviction of ticket brokers charged with failing to collect and pay sales tax on the resale of tickets to sporting events.

Nonprofit, Religious and Charitable Organizations

We provide a wide-variety of legal services to religious organizations, charities, and not-for-profit entities. In addition to formation and organization, we counsel such entities with regard to corporate governance, tax compliance, tax audits, internal investigations, and legal reporting requirements.

Our litigation expertise includes proceedings seeking the judicial approval or confirmation of mortgages on properties owned by religious organizations. For instance, we recently won an appeal reinstating a temple’s complaint to void certain mortgages as illegally recorded by the bank in violation of the Religious Corporations Law and staying the bank’s related foreclosure proceeding.

We were also successful in defending a church against claims by a bankruptcy trustee seeking to void certain charitable contributions made by the debtor. The case involved insolvency issues and novel issues under the Religious Liberty and Charitable Donation Protection Act of 1998.

Our firm prevailed on appeal and won the reinstatement of our client’s complaint to void certain mortgages as having been recorded by the bank in violation of the Religious Corporations Law.

Corporate, Business and Real Estate

Our Corporate, Business and Real Estate practice handles the structuring, formation, financing, sale, merger, restructuring, dissolution and other commercial requirements of medium and small businesses and not-for-profit entities.

We provide counsel to our corporate clients on a full spectrum of business-related matters, such as:

  • Structuring ownership and governance arrangements
  • Shareholders’ and directors’ meetings
  • Hiring and discharge of employees and consultants
  • Business dispute resolution counseling
  • Loan, security, pledge and guaranty agreements
  • Employment, independent contractor, management services and consultant agreements
  • Real estate lending, leasing and acquisition
  • Financing through debt and equity placements
  • Manufacturing, supply, terms of sale, distribution and licensing agreements
  • Non-compete and confidentiality agreements
  • Stock and asset acquisitions and divestitures
  • Stockholder, limited liability company operating and partnership agreements
  • Joint-venture arrangements