Law Firms
High-End Divorce Lawyer Says Her Firm Is Jammed with Clients
Posted Jun 16, 2009, 06:48 am CST
By Debra Cassens Weiss
The economic downturn is helping some lawyers who represent wealthy clients in divorces.
While some couples are putting off divorce because they can’t afford it, the situation is different for moneyed clients, the National Law Journal reports. Their assets are worth less, and they figure it’s a good time to divorce because they will have to give less to the other spouse.
Philadelphia's Weber Gallagher Simpson Stapleton Fires & Newby is among the law firms seeing an upturn in business. Lynne Gold-Bikin, who heads the firm’s family law practice, says the clients “are pouring in.”
"We are jammed, jammed. I think it's because we have the higher-end clients,” she told the National Law Journal. “This is is a great time for wealthy people to get divorced because their assets are down. … So if you want to keep the house, perfect time. If you want to keep the 401(k), perfect time."
Susan Moss of Chemtob Moss Forman Talbert in New York told the NLJ that she isn’t seeing more divorces, but she is seeing more complicated cases. The problem, she says, is that no one can figure out how to value the assets. “The worst cases are where we have been fighting for extended periods of time, and what we're fighting over has been lost in the stock market."
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