Lefkowicz & Gottfried, LLP

White collar crooks! If you like giving away your money for free for wasted and unethical poor legal representation, then give them your money. Otherwise, do your research and take your services somewhere else.

I used Mr. Lefkowicz for a post-​nuptial agreement matter, and frankly, if I could give the firm zero stars I would. There were so many issues with the representation, I almost do not know where to begin. I won’t go into the details of how frustrating it was to be the client and be constantly interrupted by Mr. Lefkowicz when I spoke. Or how hard it was to get a word in edge-​wise when Mr. Lefkowicz began talking. The main issue I had was the fact that Mr. Lefkowicz lacked complete attention to detail.
My husband and I sent him a term sheet of sorts with all the conditions we wanted in our agreement. Mr. Lefkowicz and I discussed the terms, and he identified no issues with them. The first draft he sent back of the agreement was basically a pro forma prenuptial agreement with only a subset of the terms we requested implemented. When I called him to ask why so many of the terms were missing, he told me that he wanted to send me a pro forma agreement just so I have an idea of what a typical agreement looks like. That’s all fine and dandy, but 1) it would be great if he had stated in his email that his first «draft» was merely supposed to be an example of a generic agreement, and 2) I don’t know why then he implemented a few of our terms and not others, which confused the whole process. There were several iterations of this process, where I would have to go back and ask Mr. Lefkowicz to implement a term he missed.
The drafting of the document was another nightmare. There were tons of spelling and grammatical mistakes. For example, in the last draft of the document, I sent him three small changes with the exact wording edits I wanted, and he misspelled two of the words. Albeit extremely annoying and not conducive to gaining client confidence, these are relatively small issues. A bigger issues is that the drafts he sent would have tons of mistakes. They range from getting the date of our marriage wrong to referencing incorrect provisions within the document itself so the agreement did not make any sense. I didn’t check the law cited because I was too lazy, and I can only hope that he did not make similar mistakes there. I had to double check EVERYTHING, and it became extremely time consuming. I once sent him an email with all the mistakes in the draft listed. I put the content of the email into a Word document, and it was over ten pages. A lawyer is supposed to make drafting an agreement easier, not harder.
To be fair, Mr. Lefkowicz does seem to have a competent grasp of the law, but understanding the law means nothing if he could implement it effectively and efficiently.

I contacted this firm on August 31 seeking a consultation regarding a landlord-​tenant matter and was told an attorney would contact me right away. After two days, I called again on Sept. 2 and left a message.
Finally, after no call back, I looked up the attorney’s e-​mail address last night and sent him a message that way. He finally responded, «You need to pursue this in small claims court. It is a rather simple process. Make sure you have all of your proofs and you should do fine.»
I was trying to contact this firm for the very reason that I now live in NC and I am unable to pursue this myself in NYC small claims court — something I could explain over the phone if ever given the opportunity.
*update — I just received a call back from the legal assistant stating that they will not represent in small claims, which is fine. It just shouldn’t take a week to get this call. This is a week lost that could have been spent finding another attorney.