Ettinger Law Firm – The Prequel

This being our 35th anniversary, your writer thought it might be of some interest to our readers just how Ettinger Law Firm first came into being. It is written in the third person to make it more readable.

The law firm was founded in a single office in West Hurley, New York, just outside Kingston, NY. Kingston sits in the Mid-Hudson Valley of New York where the firm’s founder, Michael Ettinger resided at the time.

How Michael ended up in rural West Hurley, having been born and raised in Montreal, Canada is a story in itself. He graduated law school at McGill University in Montreal (sometimes called the “Harvard of Canada”) in 1977 at the age of 22. Feeling that he was too young to start practicing law, he also yearned to move to New York after his uncle Norman, who had moved from Montreal to Scarsdale, NY a few years earlier.

Having an intellectual curiosity in the common law of Great Britain, the basis of all Canadian and American law, Michael decided to explore his interest in the richness and depth of the law by pursuing a Master of Laws degree in Maritime Law from the London School of Economics (LSE).

As a great seafaring nation, much of UK common law was historically developed through maritime law. Marrying his interest in the law with his desire to emigrate to New York, Michael chose a field of law that was uniform throughout the US and Canada that would also offer an entry into American law firms. While today it is not unusual for a Canadian law grad to be accepted to an American law firm, back in the day some of the firms Michael interviewed with looked at him as if he had two heads.

Fortunately, upon graduating from the LSE, Canadian law book publishers asked Michael to write a new Canadian treatise on Shipping Law. Not only did the stipend from writing the new book support him financially, it greatly eased his acceptance among American firms that specialized in maritime law cases.

He eventually got his foot in the door being hired by a firm that was counsel to Lloyd’s of London, the world’s largest insurer of vessels at sea. Offices were at 61 Broadway down in the Wall Street area of Manhattan. Salaries at law firms representing insurers were historically low as insurers tended to be as parsimonious as possible.

After a couple of years. Michael sought a better paying and more prestigious position with a law from representing maritime carriers (i.e. shipping companies) located in the Chrysler Building – a big step up in location from the somewhat dingy lower Broadway. He was told by one of the associates that upon his acceptance at the new firm one of the partners was overheard in the hallways expressing repeatedly and gleefully “We got the guy who wrote the book!”

The life of a litigation associate is not an easy one. While you are not expected at work until 10 am, if you’re seen leaving at 6 pm you would hear snickers such as “half day, eh?” Those who were endeavoring to get ahead regularly worked from 10 to 10 and weekends too.

Still living in his uncle Norman and aunt Marsha’s basement in Scarsdale, it turned out that he would ride the same commuter train that many of the law firm’s partners did. It was not lost on him that, with families to support and mortgages to pay, the partners were in no position to get off that train. But he was.

Michael decided that the life of a litigation associate was not for him nor was he suited to work in a large law firm, where obsequiousness to senior law partners was required for advancement. In fact, he was eventually terminated for doing work that was above the quality the firm expected. When shown work that another associate performed in much higher volume, he protested that the work contained a number of errors and that he did not know how to produce such work. Needless to say the employer always wins in matters like this.

Michael had spent the years from 1980 to 1986 being mentored by excellent New York City lawyers when he decided to hang out his shingle in Scarsdale, NY. Being married to a real estate broker at the time, he was able to establish a thriving real estate practice with referrals from her and her office associates as well as picking up general practice matters such as matrimonial and other litigation from friends and neighbors.

Unfortunately, the marriage did not last and he found himself single in a suburban community full of young marrieds starting families. Unsurprisingly, he also found himself somewhat persona non grata amongst former friends as their wives were concerned that the divorced man’s status might rub off on some of their husbands.

A former professional colleague of Michael’s had extolled the virtues of the Mid-Hudson Valley years earlier. Having visited a few times (more specifically, the beautiful and historic Mohonk Mountain House in New Paltz, NY) he was also able to see the merits of country living. Looking for a new start, Michael opened a second office in New Paltz, NY. This was only made possible by a new invention at the time known as “call forwarding”. He would stop into the Scarsdale office in the early morning and set the phone to ring at the New Paltz number, arriving there before business hours. Thus was he was able to continue his Scarsdale practice, which was his only source of income, while gathering sufficient business to enable the New Paltz office to thrive and to eventually support a move there.

A strategy was needed to garner new clients in a new geographical area where he had no friends, no history and no contacts. Knowing that realtors met every Wednesday morning to discuss firm business before setting off in “caravans” to see new listings, he hatched a plan. He researched and wrote a talk entitled “The Broker’s Legal Right to the Commission” examining legally when the brokers’ commission is earned. Essentially, it was a review of the case law where the broker had found a buyer “ready, willing and able” to buy but the seller refused to sell for one reason or another, leading the broker to sue for the commission.

He then went around to the various local real estate offices offering the talk which he was sure would be of interest. Having been received favorably, after each such talk the brokers would ask him how much he charged for a real estate closing. Michael already knew the going rate was $400 so he said $350 and business started to come in regularly. So much so in fact that a local bank, seeing him represent so many clients, offered for him to be the bank’s closing attorney in the expectation that they would get the mortgage work from many of those clients – just as it happened to nicely work out.

Attending local bar association meetings, he serendipitously found a partner to start a personal injury law practice. The partner was an experienced personal injury litigator but had trouble getting cases to try. Michael had no interest in trying cases but had a knack for bringing in clients. They joined forces with Michael doing the marketing, John trying the cases, and the practice thrived.

Fast forward to 1990 and Michael was chasing an ambulance so to speak, in other words going to visit a potential personal injury client, when he heard an ad on the radio for a “Living Trust Seminar”. He picked up his mobile phone (an actual telephone in the car and a rarity in those days) and booked himself in.

At the seminar he was surprised to learn that trusts avoid probate at death – the legal process required for every will to prove it valid. Michael has already experienced a number of issues with contests and other delays in probate proceedings and knew that avoiding probate would save his clients time and money. The seminar presenter, who was an insurance salesman, would spend a considerable time bashing lawyers and the probate system and then end his talk with a lawyer stepping up to podium up to answer any audience questions. Meeting with the insurance man afterwards, he told Michael that he had some misgivings with the lawyer he was working with and asked if Michael would be interested in participating.

Michael eagerly accepted, being very excited with the prospect of learning how to set up trusts. When his personal injury partner John expressed no interest in the new endeavor, he sold him his share of the practice and set off for Florida to train with experienced estate planning attorneys there. At the time, many of the best were in Florida, perhaps you can guess why.

In any event, once trained he came back to New York and founded Ettinger Law Firm in April 1991 to keep clients out of the probate court. As he often said in his seminars then, “when you go to probate court who is in charge? The judge, of course. Now, does the judge ever make a mistake? Yes, I said. “Every case I lost the judge made a mistake!” And when the judge says jump, your answer has to be what? The audience would answer “How high?” to which he would respond “That’s incorrect”, it’s “How high, Your Honor!” As we all know today, estate planning is about taking control back from the courts and government and giving it to you and your family.

Once he had enough business in New Paltz, he was able to close the Scarsdale office and move permanently to the Mid-Hudson Valley having opened and closed his own office there, then the partnership office and, finally, after the break up of the partnership, founding Ettinger Law Firm in 1991 in new offices in West Hurley, NY.

Michael began sponsoring his own living trust seminars in both the Hudson Valley and in Albany where he had opened a second office at 125 Wolf Road, an office still thriving today. Unknown to him at the time, these seminars were greatly ruffling the feathers of traditional law firms in both locales. These law firms had written wills and engaged in probate court proceedings for over one hundred years – now their clients were coming in complaining and asking for trusts instead of wills, a potential death knell to the lucrative practice of settling estates through court proceedings.

One day he received something far more serious than a complaint from the organized bar – an official Inquiry from the Grievance Committee stating that he was engaged in fraudulent practices and was making bogus claims – along with a list of each claim that was suspect.

Using his scholarly background and facing the threat of the loss of his law practice, Michael took a week off researching and writing a nine page single spaced letter refuting each and every claim in detail. A few weeks later a one line letter came back from the Committee stating “The Inquiry is dismissed”.

The expansion of Ettinger Law Firm to become what it is today – one of New York’s  pre-eminent elder law estate planning firms with twelve offices throughout New York State started, like all endeavors, from humble beginnings.