Elaine K. B. Siegel

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.