Overview
Zaki Tamir’s website claims that his firm provides “fresh and creative solutions to complex legal problems”. How “fresh” and “creative” are his solutions? Should you hire Zaki Tamir? Let’s look at the evidence.
Jack of all trades
It’s generally accepted in many professions that the best providers specialize. This is especially true in such a complex prefession as legal. Indeed, all largest law firms in this country have departments specific to various specialties and among the smaller firms you’ll find the top rated lawyers specialize in their fields (just try searching Martindale.com - the leading lawyer search engine - and sorting by peer reviews). So it might be somewhat surprising that Zaki Tamir’s small firm provides such a wide range of services. As of this writing his website lists only 3 attorneys including himself and yet claims expertise in 10 different practice areas (Commercial and Civil Litigation, Real Estate & Property Litigation, Commercial Transactions, Outside General Counsel, MCA Collections & Judgement Enforcement, Labor & Employment, Criminal Defense, Landlord & Tenant, Personal Injury, and Family & Matrimonial).
Performance
So is Zaki Tamir actually proficient in all these areas? What outcomes do his clients see in these various areas? Unfortunately it’s very hard to know exactly because only a small percent of most legal work is public information. We cannot compare contracts drafted by Zaki Tamir to those drafted by others nor can we compare the outcomes of private settlements. So how can we determine his true performance relative to his peers?
One thing we can do is look at the public information that does exist and extrapolate. How many cases does Zaki Tamir actually litigate? And does Zaki Tamir win cases that do go in front of a judge? Since Zaki Tamir practices law in New York City, we can get a lot of this information from New York State’s Unified Court System website (located at ttps://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/webcivil/ecourtsMain). Information there is broken down by court: Civil, Supreme, Criminal, and Family so we’ll have to look at each of these individually.
Criminal Court
Unfortunately the New York State Criminal Court system only allows us to search based on defendant name or case identifier, not by attorney name. So there’s no effective way to look up criminal cases that Zaki Tamir has worked on.
Family Court
The New York Family Court allows you to search for future appearances by attorney name. But as of this writing there are no future appearances for Zaki Tamir or his firm, Tamir Law Group. Let’s compare this to some other attorneys who claim to practice Family & Matrimonial law. I searched Martindale.com for “Family Law in New York, USA”. The first result was Evan D. Schein who has 18 files open in New York Family Court.
Civil Court
The Civil Court website allows us to search by Attorney or Firm name. Searching for Tamir Law Group returns 36 results dating back to 2012. That’s an average of less than 5 cases per year in civil court. In line, perhaps, with a small firm but probably not enough to give anyone experience to call themselves an expert. Going through the cases most of them don’t provide any real inforamtion but there exist a few interesting ones. In 2017 & 2018 Zaki Tamir separately represented 3 individuals bringing cases against the same defendant (index numbers CV-019202-17/KI, CV-019203-17/KI, CV-019204-17/KI) that were all dismissed. Then we have index number CV-004024-12/NY in which Zaki Tamir was denied his request for Summary Judgement on two separate occassions. And lastly we have index number CV-015175-14/NY, an active case as of this writing, in which Zaki Tamir is representing the Respondant. In that that case we see the judgement was granted for the Petitioner. Unfortunately the Civil Court system doesn’t provide a lot more information on these or the other cases (some of which may have been settled out of court). But these cases represent almost 14% of all the cases listed with his name in New York Civil Court and don’t paint a very rosey picture.
Another way to compare expertise would be to look at his peers. I went on Martindale.com and searched for “Civil Litigation in Brooklyn, NY”. The first result to show up was Simon Goldenberg. When I search the Civil Court for his law firm I get a warning that “Your search has found 297 cases, the results will take several minutes to display.” If we’re comparing small firms, this guy handles far, far more cases in New York Civil Court than Zaki Tamir. The second result was David J. Hernandez. The Civil Court website wouldn’t even let me view all his cases because there were too many results (over 3000). When I switched to search for only active cases the results returned 38 cases. David J. Hernandez has more active cases in New York Civil Court than Zaki Tamir has had in his entire career!
If I were choosing someone to represent me in a civil matter, I would choose someone with more experience and better outcomes.
Supreme Court
Lastly, there’s New York Supreme Court. Don’t let the name fool you, unlike the Federal Supreme Court, the New York Supreme Court is actually where many civil cases start. For example, cases seeking a monetary relief of over $25,000 may be brought directly in New York Supreme Court. Searching this court for “Tamir Law Group” returned 141 cases. Many of these cases are either still active or are closed but do not have any useful information online. Let’s take a look at a few of these cases that are closed and for which documents have been uploaded to the court’s public website.
Index number 801009/2020 refers to Revivify vs Ferony’s Deli LLC. Tamir Law Group represented the plaintiff in this case, Revivify. Tamir Law Group filed filed this case in the county of Erie which is odd because nobody involved in the case is located in Erie county. In fact, the second document submitted by the defense is a demand for change of venues in which the defense points out that that summons itself, submitted by the plaintiff, lists the addresses of the businesses all of which are in the county of Westchester. This demand was granted. The summons was filed 01/22/2020 and the order to change venue on 07/21/2020. That’s a long time to wait and I wonder how many hours were billed, unnecessariliy, during that time.
Index number EF002416-2018, Reliable Fast Cash LLC. vs Country Wine & Spirits Inc. On the surface this case seems pretty straightforward to me. There was a judgement against Country Wine & Spririts entered on December 28, 2018. Zaki Tamir at first sought to find the defendant in contempt of court on the grounds that the defendant refused to obey a subpoena seeking testimony. The judge found that plaintiff, “submitted no proof that service of the notice… has been effected” and denied the plaintiff’s motion. So over the next few days they refile a bunch of documents and the judge eventually orders the defendant to obey the subpoena within 30 days of service. I’m not sure what happened here. Was Zaki Tamir hoping the judge would not notice that they didn’t submit proof of service? It seems unlikely to me such proof existed since Tamir Law Group would certainly have submitted it had it existed. Was this just sloppy lawyering?
Index number EF000562-2018, Reliable Fast Cash LLC. vs Munchies Mart. Another pretty straightforward case. Munchies Mart had admitted it owed money to Reliable Fast Cash, LLC and the initial judgement comes pretty quickly, finding the same. In this case, as in the last, Zaki Tamir files a motion requesting the defense be held in contempt of court. And just like in the last case, the judge finds that “Plaintiff has submitted no proof that service of the notice of motion… has been effected” and denies the motion. So, once again, Tamir Law Group serves the necessary papers the court orders that defenant has 30 days to produce some documents (Subpoena Duces Tecum, presumably requiring them to produce financial records).
Index number 523525/2017, North Star City, LLC vs Citibank. This case seems to be about a title dispute. Zaki Tamir filed the complaint on 12/06/2017. On 05/30/2019 the court received a document from Tamir Law Group stating that the plaintiff had switched law firms (choosing David Stien Law Group instead of Tamir Law Group). There’s nothing wrong with someone switching attorneys but it always begs the question of “why”. Especially in this case, the plaintiff had been dealing with this case for a year and a half at that point. There would have presumably been a fair amount of time and money invested into Tamir Law Group. So I would imagine the decision did not come lightly and I wonder what prompted it.
Index number CV-004024-12/NY, Spielman, Yeshaya vs. Toner.com Inc. This case is fascinating and I’ve devoted an entire page to it here. I counted 4 appearances and 543 documents filed. I cannot begin to imagine what this cost the plaintiffs although I have heard people say they spent $10-15k each (and there were quite a few plaintiffs!) for a case that the judge himself said he was “flabbergasted” by!
Summary
It seems to me that Zaki Tamir might be a fine attorney for simple matters, especially if you don’t mind a few speed bumps along the way. But my assessment is he is a jack of all trades but master of none.