[Music] Welcome to the Millennial Lawyer podcast with New York litigation attorney Mark Shirian. Mark specializes in various areas of personal injury cases, employment law, encompassing employment discrimination and harassment, sports and entertainment law, copyright disputes, as well as civil and intricate commercial litigation. I am your host Kevin Rosenquist and for today’s episode we have a special guest attorney Adam Lightman Bailey. One of New York’s most successful and prominent real estate attorneys. All right Mark, good to see you. 

Good seeing you too Kevin. 

Adam, welcome to the show. 

Thank you for having me. 

All right so to start why don’t, Adam tell us all how you met Mark and how your professional relationship has evolved over the years. 

The real story or the one that I tell about, I’m just kidding around. Let’s see, I don’t know what rating this podcast is. So I was working at a hotel bar, now that’s a song. Where did we meet Mark? 

I don’t know, I don’t remember it’s been so many years. We actually, so I had interviewed for Adam, was the first time that we met? 

Oh you interviewed here? 

I interviewed here, yeah. 

Oh I didn’t know that. Wow. 

I forgot that I initially interviewed. 

Thank you. This isn’t gonna be a good story, then go ahead. 

Yeah well initially I interviewed, it didn’t turn into any sort of internship. So this was my first year in law school, I was interviewing with you for a position, it didn’t work out, but we always stayed in touch. Adam lectured several times at my law school at New York Law School, so I’ve always stayed in touch with Adam, and Adam I don’t know if you remember this, but before I actually started my firm, I was also working downtown at the time. And Adam has always been gracious with his time whether it’s with me or for, you know, other young attorneys who are looking for advice. And I met with you about starting my own practice. 

That’s what I thought would be the story. I remember advising you on and, not pushing you, but giving you the courage like in a wizard of eyes to go out and start your own firm and have the guts to do it, and you did it, and then I remember sending you a note or champagne or something of how proud I was of you that you started your own firm. 

Yeah that’s, I think Kevin that’s like the PG-13 version of the story. 

Well I didn’t send you a woman or anything. I sent you a bottle, you know, is there a rated version? I don’t remember that one either. 

I don’t think so. That’s the story, I don’t have, you know, those not a drinker, smoker, no drugs, you know , all that. And then I guess we got that, we just got the story. That’s just the story then, yeah. I see Joe Biden. I’m like wow we have different lives even though Joe went to my law school and I went to school with his brother. 

Oh it’s very straight laced, okay Adam you’ve had a distinguished career in real estate law, could you walk us through some of the key moments in your journey both professionally and personally that sort of helped shape your path? 

Where do you want to start? It’s so convoluted and I was born in Bayside Queens in 1970. You know, I came out of law school, I couldn’t get a job for many months, you know, I graduated in in May and I couldn’t get a job until March. Once I got a job, I didn’t look back. My boss used to come in, I was at Winsten and Winsten, was making 30,000 a year. And he used to come in, say do you ever go to sleep? Do you ever go home? My view was, I got my first job doing exactly what I wanted to do. Real estate, real estate transactional, real estate litigation, and I wasn’t ever losing a job again. I wasn’t ever going to be home, you know, I wasn’t ever like, not having a job again. I was fixated on being great and taking off and nothing was getting in my way again because it took me so long to get a full-time job. I was so motivated and, you know, and my bosses were like wow they had no idea what they caught. You know, took off from there, and my boss became a client. 

Oh nice, nice do you have any, you know, I don’t know, memorable or impactful case that you’ve handled that stands out? 

The ones that everybody knows about, I don’t like, I don’t usually talk about those because they’re, you know, they’re they’re so out there. I like the ones that give me a subject. I like the ones that like no one knows about, you know, those are the ones that I like talking about. The ones that are in every newspaper or like beating Donald Trump or the grounder mosque or getting everyone out of their contracts because of their law I found in 1968, those ones, you know, like everyone, those are already like beaten to death. The ones where you help the little old lady, those I like talking about. 

Okay Mark what do you think, what should he, what should we give him? What topic should we give him? 

I want to hear about the old lady. 

So Miss Reos was a, she’s a dentist, and she had a building in Brooklyn. A poor part of Brooklyn, she really wanted to buy her first building. And that’s where she worked out of and she wanted to buy it and the owner’s son inherited the building. I guess the owner died and he was a drunk and her sister owned a a bodega that sold alcohol on the corner. So they said well we’ll give you a tab and that will eventually meet the amount of a certain portion of the down payment. The real estate attorney, the transaction attorney, not us, never threw up a contract, but never recorded the deed. I never, you know, they had a contract but never recorded the deed to close. Even after they came to terms and even after basically, had sold the property, but even after they sold the property, he still owed money to Miss Reos. So he just kept it, he kept the deed in escrow, in his safe, no attorney should ever keep a deed in escrow in their safe. You record the deed once you close, you have to record the deed immediately, you can’t keep the deed once you close on the property. In other words, when you buy a property, it’s got to be recorded immediately and it takes about 48 hours from the closing when a title company takes your deed to close in New York City, and this is Brooklyn. So I get a call from the attorney at a crazy hour, and it’s definitely between 6:00 a.m. and 11:00 p.m. because I go to sleep, and I don’t go to sleep with any gadget just near me. So it’s not that crazy of an hour unless it’s a weekend, it may have been a weekend, but all I know is I said well we need to be online at the broker’s office at 6:00 am the next morning recording this deed because the first in line to record the deed wins. What happened was we got notice that this seller, this drunk, sold the property to two different people: us and someone else. And they had done a real closing and they had already closed and they sent, I’m sure they sent their deed to be recorded, but we know it takes a few days for the broker to actually record the process. But the law in New York is the first to get there without notice of someone else buying the property wins the case. So by getting there at 6:00 in the morning even though we know about another closing we got there at 6:00 in the morning we recorded it and we beat the other buyer by 24 hours and we were the first closing. We closed first, we just didn’t record the deed. So we were the first to close in time without knowing about another party to close even though that happened and even though that we closed first, I’m worried about this case because you know. We know there’s going to be litigation and they’re going to have a free title company. At the time, this was 2002. I didn’t represent any title companies yet and I’m at the property and I’m trying to figure out what’s going on and you know, everything’s in chaos, you know, recorded the deed then we head to the property and all of a sudden I see the new owner and he comes up to me he goes what the hell are you doing? And I said well my client owns the property, what are you doing? He doesn’t have an attorney, he’s on his own, he goes well, I’m buying the property, I own it. I go actually, I think we have the first contract, we closed, it’s my client’s property. So he punches me in the face, I go down, literally, so I figured I got him, I’m gonna stay down, call 911, wait for the police to get there, and then drop all charges in exchange for him not going after the property. So New York City 2002 and how long does it take the police to come, I’m waiting a half hour on the floor, you know bleeding, there’s no police so you know, I didn’t, you know, I could take a punch I was born in Queens. I grow up in New Jersey, California. I could, you know, I could take a punch, but I’m trying to win a case here. So it didn’t work, get back up, the police never come, you know, try them again, never come, no police report, so we end up litigating, we lose at the trial court, and we went on appeal. And that actually makes new law, they changed the statute to be more clear the first and time to record wins. We want an appeal this, Reos keeps the house. The story gets even better, her daughter who now works in a court system, she’s 10 years old at the time, says as a result of that I want to become a lawyer. She becomes a lawyer now she works at a court system and she’s a fantastic person and she became an attorney all because of this case. So actually, you know, good news and we did the case, she couldn’t afford our bill so we basically did the case pro bono. 

And you got punched in the face. 

And I got punched in the face, but I got a really great thing out of it. The title company was my client for the next 20 years, so class today, the title company we beat, we beat the title company, wind up hiring us, 

Mark, is this the first time you’re hearing this one? 

First time .I’m so glad I’m able to hear it because I’ve heard the Trump story many times so this was good. 

What are some of the most important changes you’ve witnessed, Adam, in real estate law? And what impact have they had on the profession over the last maybe 5 to 10 years? 

So the biggest changes, 2019 changed the rent laws because it really damaged our economy by taking away the deregulation of a department. In other words, if you move to an apartment a certain year, you’re rent regulated, but they used to have laws where if you put in enough money after the tenant left or if you got the tenant out or you paid the tenant to leave or you bought their lease, you could deregulate it and raise the rents to take it out of regulation. That allowed landlords to put money into the buildings. They gave people jobs and that allowed inventory to open up. That allowed you know hundreds of thousands of people to get new apartments every year. Those apartments now are frozen. Many people are keeping them empty, many, you know, many people just, they just, not rent the amount anymore, they can’t even cover their expenses with it. So we don’t have a housing shortage in New York, we just have a lack of housing inventory because of the horrible laws the state legislature has passed. That’s problem number one in my practice is they got rid of a whole practice section and tons of attorneys had to retire as a result of the change in the rent laws. 

It’s a big change because the only, you know, court would be mobbed with cases of tenants not, you know, using their apartment as their primary residence or new cases or if they’re illegally subletting and all to bring those cases just to get the tenant, regulated tenants out. Now they will bring those cases and the high-end properties bring those cases but the average joe doesn’t care anymore, and now rents are higher than ever in New York City, so that’s a real problem. The other big development in real estate in it was COVID. It was to work from home, and the work from home created a new economy where we have some attorneys that are still working from home because of their age or because they have babies. We’ve always had that but now it’s more common where it’s okay to work from home in the quote unquote world. It’s acceptable because of the go era, and that is what that means for real estate is, less people need an office. Less people needing office space is affecting our industry and the market and then there’s less people needing offices, less people are going to need services. What it’s causing is less offer space, it has meant more foreclosure for us, but at the same time, it’s less leasing, it’s less less everything in real estate, so it’s changing the real estate landscape. 

Adam could you tell us about the new New York City broker law that came into effect or that was recently passed? 

Ronald Reagan had a famous quote, the eight or nine most dangerous words in the English language. You know, I’m from the government. I’m here to help, the government interferes with the free market and says okay, no longer can a landlord pay a broker’s fee for the, you know, tenant’s broker. In other words, he banned tenant broker’s fee unless the tenant actually hires a broker which is very unfortunate in other words if you’re looking for an apartment, they can’t charge you, can no longer charge the tenant, the broker’s fee is 15% of the year rent. But that, you know, that’s now a tenant can go ahead and hire a broker, but it can’t be just an automatic thing where for you to get the apartment, you have to pay the broker. Now I could see some parts of the market where that’s a good thing, but in most parts of the market, people coming in are not educated and brokers play an important role in real estate. If you don’t know New York City, you don’t understand parts of the city, parts of the market or where you should live, or what’s least expensive, or I have this goal of being near a place where I can exercise, to say, Central Park, or a place where I like to be near the cool area, coolest area, let’s say so, or Great Village, you know, a broker know all this information that if you’re Googling, you know apartments. I just think anytime you get away from the free market it’s not, it doesn’t turn out to be a good thing. But that’s what we’re living with right now and that’s that’s the law and I just made that too complicated more complicated than it is against. That’s against exactly, I’m everything that I believe in, you know, who supposed to make things simple. 

What makes a great lawyer in your mind and how can young attorneys develop these qualities early in their careers? 

Well first of all, there’s the easy things of being a great lawyer which is you know being as, becoming as intelligent as possible, reading as much as you can about everything, having, you know, really good writing skills, research skills. As very young, reading and writing is key, knowledge of history is very important, and speaking well, but all those are to me and those are essentials for being a litigator. You know writing, research, speaking, speaking in public, but all those to me are like taking a shower. If you take a shower, no one cares if you don’t take a shower, everybody knows about it. So if you can’t write, if you can’t research, and you can’t negotiate, then yeah your client’s going to know that they’re not going to hire you. But once you have those basics down, like Mark does, then the question is how much pain can you handle. Can you work late, are you available morning, tonight, are you returning calls and emails within 24 hours, and hopefully, you know, minutes or within a few hours, are you available, are you passionate about the cases, do you treat them like they’re your own, do you care about your clients, do you care about people that you represent or the companies you represent, and those combinations together, all those 25 things I just said, I think are the recipe for being a really good lawyer. Whether it’s an extern, most of our externs become lawyers at the firm. If you look at our website, almost everybody in our firm is an extern here. They’ve stayed ever since, we have revenue sharing. So if you work hard, you get a third of what you build, that we collect. So keep people around, they’re not, they’re not staying here because they like my good looks. Partially that. Now, I doubt it, but I’m looking for something different. I’m not actually looking for any of those qualities, I’m looking for what makes you have those qualities. What kind of people have those qualities? So I grew up poor, I was born in Queens, my parents lost their jobs when I was five, okay so you want go-getters, usually are like Mark and I where we didn’t grow up with means. That’s someone so that’s a given for us. Number two, besides not being rich, I want someone that is aggressive, is a go-getter. I don’t care what school you went to, in fact I don’t hire from the Ivy’s right out of school. I want someone that is, you know, top of their class. I’m a great stop top of their class that are even the worst schools, but I’m very into competition. If you’ve competed in life, you know, and they’ve bred you and you’ve done well, success no matter how poor you think the school is, that is impressive to me. If you played sports like Mark did and you’ve done well, that’s impressive to me. So we have a lot of former athletes who did well at second and third tier Law School and colleges that just did well and I want to see your GPA in your resume and I want to see your honors in your resume. In fact I got a text, I got a text, I’m blowing up here so you can see the name, but it says they found the person of interest in the fatal shooting of the healthcare worker. Horrible shooting, yeah they already identified. But my buddy who I went to law school with, he wrote Ivy Leaguer exclamation points, could not work at the office of ALB, so they, you know, know what I’m looking for. So, you know, we want smart, hungry, and ambitious. 

Yeah that makes sense to me. Alright, my final question is for you Mark, you know the way Adam was talking before, you know, it sounds like maybe real estate law might be getting a little dicey. Do you think he’s lobbying to maybe join your firm? Would you hire him? 

I certainly would hire Adam. I don’t know if he would hire me. 

He already, well he already denied you once. 

I will say that as a young attorney I’ve always admired Adam’s tenacity and his vision and his resilience. His story always stuck with me as to how he started his firm and how he’s grown his firm and the the type of cases that he’s handled and what he continues to represent in the New York City legal Community has been nothing short of an inspiration for someone like me, who, like Adam, started with very little means and had very big dreams and grew a firm in New York city. So I’ve always admired Adam from afar and I’m so glad he was able to join us today. 

I’m honored to be here and you invited me and I’ll follow you anywhere more. And I’m really, I watch everything you do. I’m, as you can see, I comment on your posts when you post, I’m always encouraging you, and I think you’re doing a phenomenal job. 

I appreciate that. 

There’s tons of people that I missed out on that I regret and I have tons of regrets and not just said too few to remember. No I have too many I remember and they stick with me and, you know, you keep moving forward. You wipe yourself off, you get up, you keep moving forward, it’s meant to be to share it right. 

We all end up where we’re supposed to be. You gotta do it, you gotta believe, you know, yeah but everybody ends up in the right place. Alright, well thank you for tuning in to the Millennial Lawyer podcast with New York litigation attorney Mark Shirian. Thank you again to our special guest Adam Lightman Bailey, we really enjoyed this conversation. To connect with Mark you can visit shirianpc.com and don’t forget to like and subscribe to our channel and leave us a review in the comments. Mark is always great to see you. Adam, so great to meet you. Thanks so much for being with us and for all the insight and the great conversation. 

Thanks for having me. Thanks for watching, be sure to hit that like and subscribe button and leave us a review in the comments.