Dov Treiman

He is a master in the subject of landlord/tenant law. His diligence, follow up, and strategy have been instrumental in our ability to preserve our rights and execute our business plans.

Being “duly admitted to the bar” is a far different thing than being a lawyer. We, as civilised people, cannot resolve difficult conflicts by force, rather by reason and argument. Sometimes, curial intervention is required. Landlord tenant law can easily define a person practising it as sheister or mountebank, due to the often vituperative nature of the deterioration of relationships among the parties, particularly when large sums of money or ugly living conditions are involved. There are three things required, then, for efficacious practice, as they were in our case, to wit, immense expertise in the most arcane matters of real property and rent laws, as a building was being converted, then, the ability to accept peoples' feelings, responding to them, while remaining calm, objective and compassionate, and lastly, the ability to communicate compassionately, but firmly with all involved. Mr Treiman epitomises the compassionate man of letters. In every manner of legal scholarship and comportment towards us, his clients, in a thorny, and, at some times, violently emotional, matter he was not only educated and knowledgeable, but wise. He knows statute and stare decisis as well as any landlord tenant lawyer I have ever known, can articulate this knowledge to his clients, and develop a strategy to achieve the result most consonant with both law and equity. He never yields, never gives up. The approach to the case is not merely litigation, but creating on all possible fronts, curial, administrative, and political, an arena and atmosphere in which the rights of a rent-stabilised tenant will be recognised and honoured. The multi-faceted approach to the real issue of a place to live, rather than the mere legal concept of demised premises, is almost unique in today's world of the blinder bound race horse. He knew at every turn what to say, to whom, and how. There is no more erudite master of LT law in New York. He is the expert. His ability to relate to human beings, however, is what most deeply sets him apart from others in that speciality. He is the master of the technique of his vocation, while being deeply committed as a person to being human. In other words, genuinely competent. He is, in short, one of the few who earn the name of lawyer.