Economic Storm Hits Lawyers Hard But 'Unhappy Work' Offers New Opportunities
A couple of years ago, attorney Ira Goldenberg did about 10 residential real estate closings a month. Now he is handling just one.
Talk of the nation’s economic debacle has been the central topic among Goldenberg and other lawyers at the annual meeting of the New York State Bar Association. But even as they commiserate about the hard times many in the profession are facing, a number of attorneys also report that the financial crisis is also creating new opportunities for legal work, reports the New York Law Journal in an article reprinted in New York Lawyer (reg. req.).
Although his White Plains law firm, Goldenberg & Selker, isn’t seeing much of some of the types of work it traditionally handled, the firm isn’t suffering because it has shifted to other real estate-related “unhappy work,” says Goldenberg. “Defaults, foreclosures, workouts, compelling unit owners to pay common charges.
“So business is OK, but it is very different,” he tells the legal publication. “I am doing a lot of litigation and you are seeing a lot of very unhappy people. There are always perennial people who don’t pay. But in addition to those, you are seeing people who have never popped up on the radar before, and many of them have very sad stories.”
