Elaine K. B. Siegel

My wife and I had a very bad experience while she was attending Rush university in their nurse anesthesia school. The experience was the worst thing to have happened to her, and by extension, me as well. We ended up filing a lawsuit against the university, and after consulting several people, hired E...laine to represent us. We simply cannot say enough good things about Elaine. Rush had their huge blue-chip firm and we had only Elaine and her one or two assistants. Yet, Elaine went toe to toe with them. She battled and she cared. It was a brutally difficult case, and in the end we did not win. But even so, my wife and I still feel that getting to know Elaine was a positive that came out of the whole nightmare. We spoke to many, many people over the several years that this lawsuit ran its course. We even hired one attorney who was truly a nightmare to work with. We knew these types were out there, but this person was unfriendly, unprofessional, and incredibally stressful to work with. Then we got a recommendation to contact Elaine. From the getgo, she was warm, friendly, and it was abundantly clear that she cared. Unlike our previous consult, she was not out to get every ounce of money out of us that she possibly could. She simply cared. Her firm is very small -- but this means you will get very personal service. If you email her, she will email you back (again, not at all like our previous attorney). Talk to Elaine - and you will see what we mean.

I have had the pleasure and great good fortune to work with Elaine Siegel in a variety of ways over the past 30 years. She is exceptionally intelligent and informed. She is a brilliant strategist. She will tell you when your case is solid and when you should try other means first. I have referred man...y public school parents, teachers and staff to Elaine with excellent results. She has represented several parent-majority local school councils in arbitration hearings and has won every case. These are enormously time-consuming cases which she works with no upfront fee and for which the district

Elaine represented me in a discrimination complaint. She was knowledgeable, and she understood my perspective and situation. However, she did not exchange material information between myself and the party I was complaining against in a timely fashion. Particularly, in advance of our arbitration heari...ng, the opposing party made a counteroffer, and I had provided a counteroffer to that which was between my original offer and their counteroffer. She failed to communicate to the other party in advance of arbitration after being asked to do so (and assuring me she would) for several weeks in a time-sensitive situation. Then she arrived half an hour late to the arbitration session. This session was unsuccessful as a result of the miscommunication -- her tardiness also looked unprofessional and diminished our credibility -- and as a result, the complaint dragged on for four months more than it needed to. These four months were psychologically exhausting, and financially straining. In that time, Elaine's fees doubled. I sometimes wonder if she intentionally created a situation which would protract the length of the case. As a general rule, just remember that a lawyer's interests may diverge from yours -- your goal is to maximize your outcome, their goal is to maximize their fees. These two goals are not always incompatible (contingency arrangements, for example), but I hired her on a fixed hourly rate basis. I wish she had been more responsive earlier. I would have had a much better outcome, financially and psychologically. She's busy and has a lot of priorities, and if you aren't on the top list of her priorities, you will receive a lower quality of service, but you will be charged the same fees as her priority cases. She might be more valuable to you if you get her in a lull in her schedule and she has time to keep her commitments.