Q: What kinds of clients do you represent at Peckar & Abramson?
A: In addition to general commercial counseling including civil and criminal litigation, my practice has become focused on advising clients about the complex regulatory environment and the risks it presents to their businesses. This includes representing clients before both civil and criminal authorities on the federal, state, and local levels. While a large number of clients are members of the construction and securities industries, my practice includes clients from sundry other disciplines, including lawyers, law firms, major educational institutions, members of the fashion industry, industrial supply companies, insurance entities and not-for-profits. My practice involves white-collar matters, the civil regulatory matters that so often precede or follow such matters, and internal investigations.
Q: Your firm is legal counsel to the Building Trades Employers' Association. What is the function of the association and what service does the firm provide?
A: The Building Trades Employers' Association (BTEA) is a representative organization for 27 trade union contractor associations. These associations, in turn, represent the 1,700 construction managers, general contractors, and specialty subcontractor firms which employ 120,000 people in New York City.
The BTEA's mission is to advance the interests of its members and their corporate constituents in order to assure the continued success of the vibrant, unionized construction industry essential to New York's economy.
Peckar & Abramson, and especially Bob Peckar and Steve Charney, performs basic, full-service, and traditional counseling to the BTEA in all its endeavors. Such is our belief in the value of the BTEA to the industry and community that we provide these services pro bono.
Q: Do you represent individual builders? How much of your firm's business comes from the construction industry?
A: Peckar & Abramson counsels the industry's most successful contractors, professionals/individuals, and associations. That is not to say, however, that our firm's practice is limited to the construction industry. Indeed, what attracted me to the firm a little more than three years ago was overall depth of its practice groups and the 'results' oriented approach of its people.
The firm now boasts approximately 100 lawyers in nine U.S. cities and affiliations around the globe. We are now a full service firm, albeit one that is wisely mindful of its roots as the go-to firm for the construction industry.
Q: In your experience, how does regulation of the construction industry differ from regulation of the securities industry?
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