“When you really need somebody to deliver and not just hold your hand but be a partner in the process, this is the firm … I am incredibly satisfied.”
My name is John Shkolnik. A year ago, I joined the Board of my Coop. I live in Luna Park in Coney Island which is a five building 1600 unit complex totaling maybe 6,000 residents. When I joined, we needed to choose a new lawyer. We didn’t have confidence in the one that we had before and we went with Adam. I know that when you are considering an adviser, a lawyer or a law firm, there are already a lot of facts that you can gleam without ever talking to anyone else. There are groups that ring lawyers that can tell you whether they can get you across the finish line. But there are a lot of things you are not going to be able to learn until you have already been in the trenches with somebody who really, really needs to do the job that you need them to do and it’s more than just results as well. It’s also the road to the results. You want to know where you are at any given time. Will they be responsive or will you only hear from them when it’s invoice time?
The Luna Park, last year, was not just in the midst of acting as a normal large corporation. We also faced a $68 million dollar full renovation of every single brick and roof in the complex. This involved private funds, city funds, funds from various politicians and it all had to come together for us in order to make it work. We needed someone extraordinary. To be quite honest with you, we didn’t know we had found that person until after the fact. I can tell you right now that it’s true. When you really, really, really need somebody to deliver and not just hold your hand but be a partner in the process, this is the firm that I would go with it.
As a member of the board, I am one of nine people responsible for overseeing all of the operations making sure that our management do the job that we want them to do. It’s not only to keep the company healthy and running but to increase the conveniences. They are available to the shareholders, to the residents. There are all sorts of small details that you always need a lawyer’s advice on. If you want to open up a dog run, what are the signs that you have to put up? What are the liabilities that we face? What will be protected? Is it even possible to do this? To have a firm like Adam Leitman Bailey, P.C. on call, constantly responsive, it’s invaluable. In these modern times, we expect instant results, we expect instant information, and we expect instant advice. I’ve dealt with other lawyers before and I’ve never had that. These guys are all, I don’t know, organically connected to all the various mobile devices that they need in order to get back to you right away. This is special and they actually do it.
The $68 million project. To bring it across the finish line, it took so much work and I am sure that there is much that I didn’t even see but I just preferably was aware of what the guys like Adam Bailey and Leonard Ritz were doing for us. All the calls and pulling together all the different parties. As I mentioned, this city, the politicians, other lawyers, the banks, we really needed it all to come together in one day, in one morning, everything had to come together just right in order for it to all happen or otherwise everything would have fallen apart and this was the end result of pinnacle of ten years of blood, sweat and tears from many, many different parties and I am really really proud that we managed to pull it off and we wouldn’t have done it without the lawyers that we chose for ourselves when we began. I do know that Adam has the best record of evictions not just for Luna Park but for HPD, the city agency that oversees us, which is pretty impressive.
I am a real person. I would not endorse someone that I only thought did a job that was okay. I am pretty sure that my name would possibly post a picture on the walls on many customer service centers throughout the world. I am incredibly demanding. I want everything. I want it now. I want you to think about it before I did it and I want you to give me three options so that I can make the best decision possible. I am incredibly satisfied with Adam Leitman Bailey, with the lawyers that I have interacted with here, with the connections that he has established for us in order to get the job done well for the people that depend on us and I very strongly endorse him to you.