Firm Life

Friedman Kaplan is composed of individuals of differing backgrounds and points of view, but nevertheless has a strong firm culture that makes it an enjoyable and professionally satisfying place to work. Our lawyers not only are smart, hard-working, and dedicated to practicing law, but genuinely like working with each other and lead full and varied lives outside the office. The mutual respect and camaraderie that characterize our firm, among both its attorneys and its staff, help explain why our attorneys rarely choose to leave us for another New York firm.

We are a firm where everyone matters. Many cases are staffed with two or three lawyers, and we look for our associates to feel a personal commitment to their matters and to take on as much responsibility as they can handle. It is not unusual for attorneys to take or defend depositions, or to work extensively with clients in corporate transactions, very early in their careers. The cases and transactions we handle are interesting and typically complex. We believe confronting such challenges is especially rewarding when done in a more intimate setting.

We demand the highest levels of performance in service to our clients, but do so in a friendly, informal, and non-bureaucratic environment. There are no weekly partners' lunches. Instead, for more than a decade, the firm has had weekly lunches for all lawyers at which everyone has a chance to socialize as well as discuss the firm's recent cases and transactions and other issues of interest to all attorneys. Associates play an important role in recruiting and other aspects of firm management. The team spirit that pervades the firm's professional work also manifests itself on the softball field and basketball court.

Work is allocated among associates through each department's assigning partner, who takes into account not only individual associates' workloads, but also their professional development needs and interests. Associates typically work directly with the partner in charge of a matter.

FKSA also actively encourages all attorneys to undertake pro bono work. Our lawyers have volunteered with the Monday Night Legal Advisory Workshop of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York and the Incarcerated Mothers Law Project of the Women's Prison Association, and provided pro bono legal services to clients referred to the firm through inMotion, the Institute for Justice, Lambda Legal, New York Legal Assistance Group, the Fair Housing Justice Center, and Human Rights First. In addition, the firm represents a number of nonprofit organizations on a pro bono basis, including the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Synapse Productions, Inc., and the Yogi Berra Museum and Learning Center. The firm also has provided substantial pro bono assistance for families of victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks.

The firm's low associate-to-partner ratio makes it possible for attorneys to find and form connections with role models and mentors among their fellow attorneys. More formally, each first- and second-year associate or junior-level lateral associate is paired with a partner who is available to help navigate the challenges of working in a law firm, including communication skills, career development, managing workload, and pursuing individual interests.

Associates' annual performance reviews are structured to provide each associate with a detailed evaluation of the attorney's overall development and performance in the previous year as well as to set concrete goals for the coming year. Each review involves one to three partners, and seeks to include evaluations from every attorney with whom an associate has worked.

FKSA has grown from six lawyers in 1986 to more than seventy today. We have chosen a path of slow and deliberate growth to maintain our quality of lawyers and quality of firm life. We offer associates a compensation and benefits package that is competitive with that of much larger New York firms, but we have no desire to be a "big firm." Indeed, we believe that with the current trend toward law firm consolidation, there is an even greater need for smaller, independent firms that do not have the ethical and business conflict issues that inevitably arise when firms grow to hundreds of lawyers. We believe sophisticated clients will increasingly look to firms like ours to provide the high-quality, personalized attention they demand.

We seek talented, dedicated lawyers with excellent academic credentials through lateral hiring, recruitment of judicial law clerks, and hiring directly from law schools.