Areas of Practice

With a few exceptions, attorneys in New York are not allowed to claim that they are “specialists” in any field of law. The limited exceptions are patent and trademark law and admiralty law (which deals with things such as damaged cargo on ocean going freighters). Most attorneys – including Grimble & LoGuidice – have certain dominant areas of practice. We also have certain areas of practice that we generally will not touch; if you come to us with a problem in one of those areas we will probably not take the case, although we may be able to recommend a colleague.

According to the ethical rules, we are classed as a “general practice” law firm, as are a vast majority of the law firms in New York.

That being said, we know that if you have the need of a lawyer, you will want to find out what types of matters they will take on.

A great deal of our practice is litigation in New York State Courts, with an occasional foray into Federal Court or Bankruptcy Court. A great deal of our practice involves real estate matters – summary eviction proceedings, foreclosures, administrative proceedings before the DHCR, obtaining repairs for tenants, appeals from administrative determinations. We also handle a number of business related litigation cases.

In litigation matters, we also handle negligence (personal injury or “PI”) cases, breach of contract matters, some matrimonial (divorce) cases, some bankruptcy matters, and other types of litigation.
As attorneys who are very familiar with real estate matters, we handle transactional matters – closings, refinancing, house and building sales, and related matters that do not involve any court cases. Like most attorneys, we are very comfortable drafting simple wills for our clients. We also handle matters such as Department of Buildings violations, and we have appeared in administrative hearings in front of several agencies and licensing authorities. Like most lawyers, we are happy to set up corporations, limited liability companies and other business entities for our clients.

Through our client base, we have come to handle matters relating to entertainment law, including filing copyright applications, and working with entertainment contracts, although that is a small part of out work.

There are other types of cases that we sometimes take, but usually will not. These would include criminal defense matters, as well as tax, maritime or admiralty matters, patent applications, and matters in other states or cases brought a substantial distance from New York City.