we are

probably the largest

law firm

right now

who

devote themselves

particularly to divorce work we have

about 30

lawyers

that are all

placed well in the community to

represent different

types of clients

but i never understood

the concept of teamwork as i recognize

it now

teamwork requires empathy

it means that you’re empathic to

your teammates

the members of your firm

but also to your adversaries and to your

clients

what does that mean that means that

when a client

is going through

his or her litany of complaints and why

they’ve ended up in in your office and

please don’t tell my spouse

that i’ve been here i just want to know

my rights and of course

20 minutes later they’re writing you a

retainer check but

they recognize that

they are complaining

but why are they complaining

what’s a complaint really

about and that is empathy

finally

the judges

say things and you have to understand

why the judges are saying what they’re

saying

what they mean

what they’re doing and consequently

we are all empathic here at cone claire

lands greifer thorpe and rotten strike

[Music]

the firm is a strictly family law

practice we do mainly divorces we also

do pre-nuptial agreements and

post-nuptial agreements we do some

because the law has just changed in new

york we’re just starting to do some

surrogacy and egg donor work as well

so the firm i would say skews towards

high net worth and ultra high net worth

cases celebrity cases um people who have

a high profile as well

i would say that you know

certainly in the last

10 years or so we’ve seen what that

means change a little bit so i would

tell you now that not everybody is ultra

high net worth some of our clients have

you know in the tens of millions of

dollars which is still a significant

amount of money

we also represent people at the very

other end of the spectrum with billions

and billions of dollars

[Music]

i’ll answer that in two parts uh i find

in my experience uh people looking for a

family law attorney may be sophisticated

business people or have some

exposure to law and litigation they may

have lawyers that they deal with

probably the easiest and most common way

is they would talk to a lawyer that they

know

sometimes a family member sometimes

someone that they’ve been using

and they could get recommendations from

a lawyer that will solve a lot of the

problems that someone who doesn’t have

that sort of

ability uh may encounter you know you

have some people who don’t have

any exposure to the legal system before

a divorce and this is also new and very

overwhelming they may not have lawyers

in their family they may be new to this

country

uh and they’re kind of you know in the

abyss and it would be nice if they could

sort of find

a friend or a friend of a friend who

knows a lawyer to help them through the

process of selecting a family lawyer

and what you’re ultimately looking for

is someone with experience is probably

the most important part of this i’d say

anywhere between seven eight nine years

experience is a good number of years

where they should have seen a lot of

different things and

encountered a lot of different issues

success rates is hard to find out in the

public domain you kind of have to know

people who know the family law bar

and professional reputation too you may

have been practicing for a while

maybe you have some success maybe you

don’t have some success but i think

professional reputation

is a very important factor too um some

people are well

regarded and well liked amongst the bar

the judges their peers they could get

deals done

um they could also try a case if they

have to

but ultimately once you’ve done your

homework and you sort of figured out who

might be a potential

lawyer to select from it comes down to

fit you just have to feel comfortable in

my opinion

with your lawyer you have to have

confidence

in your lawyer you can’t second guess

triple guess you could always ask

questions and you should always ask

questions but ultimately you have to

have confidence in the lawyer that you

select

and they should have that right

combination of experience success or

track record

and

a good good reputation among the bar

[Music]

when a client would come in we would

have an initial consult and we would

charge them our hourly rate for the

initial council our hourly rates

vary depending on

attorney

partners range anywhere between seven

hundred dollars an hour up to eleven

hundred dollars an hour or in addition

to that they change every year but then

when they would actually decide to

retain us we would take a retainer we

would we would discuss that with the

client

and then we would work off that retainer

at the hourly rate um we cannot get

contingency fees that’s not permitted in

new york so we work on an hourly basis

and actually the way we bill is by every

tenth of an hour so we actually bill for

every 10 minutes that we work

so for instance if somebody was you know

billing uh 600 an hour that would be

divided by

10 minute increments and that’s how the

person would be built and every month or

so

clients get their bills they can see

exactly what the attorney did for them

how much is left on their retainer or

how much is owed and that’s how we bill