At Reich & Paolella, we focus solely on litigation and advocacy, representing our clients before trial and appellate courts, in arbitrations, and in criminal and regulatory investigations.Our partners have more than three decades of experience representing clients in high-stakes matters. We’ve practiced at the nation’s top law firms, prosecuted cases for the federal government, and clerked on the United States Supreme Court. What set us apart are:
Our founding partners have extensive courtroom experience. David Reich is a veteran trial lawyer and a former federal prosecutor. Chris Paolella has drawn on his experience clerking on the United States Supreme Court and on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit to develop an active practice focusing on appeals and critical motions. Together, we’ve successfully represented some of the nation’s largest companies and institutions in litigations worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Our courtroom expertise drives our practice: We like to go to trial and win. But even when cases settle or are resolved on the motions, our experience lets us focus on the things that make a difference to the outcome. We use pretrial discovery to develop evidence that supports our core trial themes, not to run up hours chasing rabbits down holes. We use motion practice to weed out peripheral issues before we get in front of a jury, while giving the judge a preview of the story we plan to tell at trial.
By focusing on trial at the earliest stages of litigation, we narrow the issues. We also gain leverage on our opponents. Lawyers who are prepared to go to trial get more favorable settlements.
Our experience has taught us that complex cases are won not through wars of attrition, but by highly-skilled lawyers with a focused strategy and the ability to handle all stages of litigation—from pre-complaint counseling, to jury trial, to the final appeal. We focus on winning, not on peripheral skirmishing that wastes our time and our clients’ money.
Our smaller size and greater flexibility enable us to provide clients with the skills and experience they would find at a top national firm at a lower cost. They also let us aggressively represent claimants as well as defendants.
We are small by choice: Thanks to our size, lean staffing and active partner involvement aren’t just slogans for us, they are necessities. We don’t have an army of associates. As a result, our senior lawyers direct every aspect of every case.
Our experience and flexibility let us punch well above our weight. We partner with nationally-renowned academics to focus and hone our legal arguments. We put the latest document control systems directly in the hands of our lawyers. We work with trusted outside vendors and consultants to coordinate electronic discovery. In many cases, we use accountants and experienced analysts, not lawyers, to conduct initial reviews of documents. And in the right cases, we are happy to partner with other, larger firms, to whom we can provide strategic advice and legal and trial expertise.
And because we’re not a large, full-service firm, we can maintain a conflicts-free profile that allows us to litigate aggressively against major institutions as either plaintiffs or defendants.
Collaboration and accountability are the cornerstones of our client relationships.
Because different clients have different needs, we reject a cookie-cutter approach. We ask our clients what their goals are and work with them to shape a litigation strategy that fits their needs.
One client may need to win at any cost; we can tailor an aggressive strategy that will put the other side on the defense and line up discovery with an eye to trial. Another client may want to force a quick settlement to save litigation costs or minimize negative publicity; we can refine our pretrial strategy to focus on early dispositive motions and on increasing our leverage for settlement. We focus on winning, but only after our clients tell us what a “win” is for them.
We use innovative management tools to ensure that we’re held accountable for efficiently executing the strategy we’ve agreed upon. For example, we track critical case details in our project management system: external and internal due dates, what’s been done, what’s on time, what’s delayed, how much of the budget has been spent. We share this data with our clients on a regular basis.
We also meet face-to-face with our clients as frequently as every quarter to see whether they’re satisfied with our services and to learn how we can add more value as advocates. In our experience, what we learn from these meetings is far more candid and helpful than boilerplate written surveys.
We believe that lawyers should be rewarded for getting results, not running up hours. That’s why we prefer fees that reward success and efficiency, and believe that in most cases at least part of our fee should be based on the outcome of the case.
These arrangements can include fixed fees (we assume the risk of overruns, but benefit if we bill fewer hours than expected), value fees (we receive a fraction of our fee under an hourly arrangement and additional money only if our results exceed agreed-upon criteria), and contingent fees (we get paid only if we achieve a financial recovery or other favorable result).
Success-based fees tie our economic interests more closely to our clients’. That’s good not only for our clients but also for us: We believe in our abilities, and are willing to bet on our results. And most clients prefer fee arrangements that are fixed and certain, not just budgets that are subject to constant upward revision.
