SYRACUSE, N.Y. — Bond, Schoeneck & King, PLLC — a Syracuse–based law firm with 250 attorneys across 13 offices — has been on a mission to expand and become a full-service law firm in the greater New York City area. The firm has taken another key step in that direction with its announcement that it […]
SYRACUSE, N.Y. — Bond, Schoeneck & King, PLLC — a Syracuse–based law firm with 250 attorneys across 13 offices — has been on a mission to expand and become a full-service law firm in the greater New York City area.
The firm has taken another key step in that direction with its announcement that it will soon be combining with a smaller Long Island firm.
Effective June 1, Lazer, Aptheker, Rosella & Yedid — which is based in Melville, New York and also has an office in South Florida — will join Bond, bringing 23 lawyers. That includes about 15 partners. Bond will also add 14 support staff from the Lazer firm.
The combination will boost Bond’s Long Island presence to 40 attorneys — the firm already has an office in Garden City — and continue its downstate expansion. A little over a year ago, Bond combined with New York City–based Putney, Twombly, Hall & Hirson, adding 15 lawyers. Bond also opened an office in Westchester County last fall.
“For a long time now, we’ve been looking to make our downstate practice, in particular our Long Island practice, full service. Currently in our Garden City office, we represent a lot of public-sector clients, we do a lot of litigation work, and labor and employment in particular. But we’ve always had a strategic plan to expand and diversify the practice,” Kevin Bernstein, chair of the Bond, Schoeneck & King management committee, tells The Central New York Business Journal in an interview. “[Lazer] provided us exactly what we’re looking for, and that is they are a commercial business and litigation firm. They do a lot of things, and basically, they would turn our practice downstate into a full-service location.”
Bond and Lazer had discussed combining on and off over several years and like a lot of things in business, COVID put things on pause for a while. But the timing looked right now.
“Why now? The opportunity presented itself. We finally got past some, but not all, of the
difficulties of COVID, and it just seemed like the time was right …so that we could move forward with a really comprehensive and actually fairly large-sized Long Island practice,” Bernstein explains.
Founded in 1987, Lazer, Aptheker, Rosella & Yedid began as a small commercial litigation firm. Since its founding, it added services in real-estate conveyance, financing, and leasing; general business and corporate law; mergers and acquisitions; debtors’ and creditors’ rights; tax; trust and estate; and banking litigation.
“Our culture is a great fit with Bond’s, making this combination something that our attorneys are looking forward to. We have referred services to Bond over the years in practice areas that we didn’t offer and know many of the lawyers professionally and personally,” Ralph Rosella, managing partner of Lazer, said in a statement. “This will be beneficial to our clients, and we’re excited to be part of a firm that can offer a broader array of legal services and excellent client service to help them realize their objectives.”
Rosella is coming aboard Bond and will be the Melville co-office managing member with Craig Olivo, who has that role now in Bond’s Garden City office.
Bernstein says that as soon as Bond’s leadership met the leadership of the Lazer firm to forge an agreement, “we knew we could work well together.”
“I could tell right from the beginning that we would enjoy practicing law together. And that’s really what you’re looking for in kind of a collegial, collaborative approach to the practice of law, which to me makes up a large part of what law firms like to call culture,” he notes.
After the Lazer lawyers join, the Bond law firm, which was founded in 1897, will grow to 15 offices in five states and 275 attorneys. The Lazer office in Melville encompasses 20,000 feet while its office in West Palm Beach, Florida is about 4,000 square feet, according to Bernstein.