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Cuyler Burk is pleased to announce that SuperLawyers magazine has included five of its lawyers in their 2009 issue.

Richard Crooker and Peter Petrou make their debut on the SuperLawyer list this year.  Joining them are returnees Stephen Cuyler (2007, 2008) and Barry Osmun (2008). 

For the second year in a row, Jaclyn DiLascio Malyk has been named as a “Rising Star.”

You can get futher infomation from the SuperLawyers site:  http://www.superlawyers.com

In recognition of the economic power of privately held businesses, DiversityBusiness.com, the nations’ leading business-to-business internet site, recently named Cuyler Burk, P.C. one of the Top 100 Women Owned Businesses in the State of New Jersey.

“Entrepreneurs are a growing force in the U.S. economy, and a force to be reckoned with,” said Kenton Clarke, CEO of Computer Consulting Associates International, the company that built DiversityBusiness.com. This is a whole business segment that can carry its own, that provides jobs, products and services, and generates wealth for their communities. These are the new leaders in American business.”

“We are honored to be counted among such extraordinary women,” said Jo Ann Burk, CEO of Cuyler Burk, LLP.

The List

This List is a classification that represents the top small businesses in the U.S., in sectors such as technology, manufacturing, food service and professional services. Large organizational buyers throughout the country that do business with multicultural, small and women-owned businesses use the list. The List is produced annually by DiversityBusiness.com, the nation’s leading multicultural B2B Internet portal that links large organizational buyers to multicultural product and service suppliers.

The winning companies will be honored at a special awards ceremony at DiversityBusiness.com’s “9th Annual Multicultural Business Conference”, taking place April 29 – May 1, 2009 at the Disney’s Contemporary Resort in Orlando, Florida.

For the complete list of winning companies, please visit: www.diversitybusiness.com

Launched in 1999, DiversityBusiness, with over 46,000 members, is the largest organization of diversity owned businesses throughout the United States that provide goods and services to Fortune 1000 companies, government agencies, and colleges and universities. DiversityBusiness provides research and data collection services for diversity including the “Top 50 Organizations for Multicultural Business Opportunities”, “Top 500 Diversity Owned Companies in America”, and others.

Its research has been recognized and published by Forbes Magazine, Business Week and thousands of other print and internet publications. The site has gained national recognition and has won numerous awards for its content and design. It is a leading provider of Supplier Diversity management tools and has the most widely distributed Diversity magazine in the United States. DiversityBusiness.com is produced by Computer Consulting Associates International Inc. (CCAii.com) of Southport, CT. Founded in 1980.

Cuyler Burk, P.C., a New Jersey Law Firm, congratulates its partners, Rich Crooker and Ed Collins, its client, International Risk Group, LLC, the City of Downey (California), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the General Services Administration (GSA) and the other stakeholders and their advisors on the Downey, California redevelopment project’s receipt of the Phoenix Award for Region 9 of the USEPA at the Brownfields 2008 Conference in Detroit, May 5-7, 2008. The Phoenix Award is recognized as a top environmental award for development of significant brownfields sites using innovative and practical remediation processes to restore contaminated sites to productive use with positive impact for their communities.

This award stems from the successful return of the Former NASA/Downey Industrial Plant in Downey to productive use. The work, which has been progressing since 2003, involves environmental remediation and redevelopment of 160 acres of property located approximately 15 miles east of Los Angeles International Airport. The property was used by the military for airplane assembly during the World War II era and later by NASA in its Apollo and Space Shuttle programs. The property then became excess to NASA’s mission but remained contaminated, principally with solvents in soil and groundwater incidental to the work performed there over the years.

The transaction provides an illustration of Early Transfer of contaminated federal property in accordance with CERCLA. The structure demonstrates how vital site-controls needed for effective privatization of historical environmental clean up cost on a fixed budget must be balanced with the realities of real estate development, requiring that all stakeholders perform with a sound understanding of the degree to which all rights and interests are intertwined.

Mr. Crooker’s client, International Risk Group, worked closely with the GSA, NASA, the City and other stakeholders to build the required relationships and agreements. The Governor of California, advised by state regulators, then signed off on the transaction, setting in motion the process whereby the real property and improvements were transferred from Federal Government ownership to the City prior to completion of environmental cleanup with private ownership and redevelopment commencing simultaneously.

Private redevelopment includes the Downey Studios (a major motion picture and television studio), a retail power center (Downey Landing) and a Kaiser Permanente regional hospital center and related complex. The transaction was facilitated by an environmental risk assumption agreement undertaken by a subsidiary of International Risk Group, by which it agreed to perform the required environmental clean up to no further action and to insulate the exiting federal government and incoming stakeholders, including the City of Downey, from financial risk associated with historical environmental conditions. Manuscripted environmental insurance products were utilized to secure these obligations.

Since the real estate and environmental risk assumption transaction closed in 2003, numerous major films, as well as the television series Smash Lab, have been made at the Studio, the retail center has opened and continues to operate at or near full occupancy, and construction of the hospital complex continues. Kaiser Permanente’s medical facilities are scheduled to commence full operations in 2010. Development has occurred simultaneously with ongoing environmental remediation at the site.

For further information, contact Richard Crooker at 973.734.3200 or rcrooker@cuyler.com.

So, you have decided you have better things to do with your money than to pay your lawyer the fees he has incurred in representing you.  The lawyer sues you for his fees.  You make the further decision to file a counterclaim for legal malpractice even though you know there is no basis for the malpractice claim.  Your strategy is that the malpractice claim will induce the lawyer to drop his suit for fees or to settle the claim cheaply.  At the very worse, the countersuit will delay the day you actually have to pay your former lawyer. 

What could go wrong? 

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The following article appeared in NJ CEO magazine and is reproduced here with permission.

MAKING HISTORY

A legal visionary guides a museum into the future

BY SUSAN BRIERLY

When it comes to her career, Jo Ann Burk is all about championing change.

In 1987, as the legal ranks were filling with female associates, women partners were still scarce. So Burk joined four other attorneys to found Cuyler Burk, P.C., in Parsippany.

“I was particularly proud to manage a highly visible commercial law firm with major corporate clients in the late 1980s – a time when women attorneys just weren’t doing that in New Jersey,” says the Chester resident and Seton Hall law school grad.

When she’s not in her office or a courtroom, you’ll likely find Burk at Macculloch Hall Historical Museum in Morristown, where her mission is preserving the past.

“This wonderful 1810 home was the residence of prominent families for five generations,” she says. “It’s seen its share of politicians, military heroes, business entrepreneurs and artists.” Indeed, past visitors include President Ulysses S. Grant and Commodore Matthew Perry. Burk sits on the board of the nonprofit museum, which boasts one of the state’s finest collections of furniture and art from the 18th and early 19th centuries.

“It’s a real pleasure to help launch events and exhibits, like the museum’s private collection of works by 19th-century political cartoonist Thomas Nast,” she says. This year Burk is taking her efforts to a new level, volunteering to launch a corporate membership program, which invites businesses to sponsor museum events.

Burk has taken on new professional roles too.

In 2007, she became CEO and majority shareholder of Cuyler Burk and was ranked by NJBIZ magazine as one of the state’s top 50 female business owners. Her firm also received its Women’s Business Enterprise National Council certification. It’s a fitting designation for a company that’s always been managed by a woman.

Let me start by saying that I am never surprised by the generosity of my co-workers.  So, what I have to say here reveals nothing new about our staff.  The only thing that is new is this blog.  I plan to take full advantage of this forum to acknowledge all things good about Cuyler Burk.  

After hours of coordination and shopping, today, our staff delivered a large carload of groceries and homemade baked goods to help an area family celebrate tomorrow’s holiday.   Knowing my co-workers, their generosity will be repeated in a couple of weeks when they begin shopping for children’s toys to fill the wish list of yet another local family.    

I am proud to be associated with compassionate and caring people.   And I thank them for showing their thanks by giving back to their community.

Former Cuyler Burk file clerk, Andrew Durkin, had another 59 seconds of fame last week as one of his compositions “Anger Management Classes” (as performed by his band, Industrial Jazz Group) was featured as bumper music on NPRs Talk of the Nation.

I started here as an 22 year old, fresh-faced college grad about to embark on law school, who thought it was time to drop my tennis racquet (my previous summer jobs involved teaching tennis and being a country club tennis pro) and enter the “real world” to work at a law firm to prepare for the rigors of a life in law. At least a million document reviews later (sadly not an exaggeration) I may not have had much of a summer lesson in the finer points of the law, but I did know that CB was a group of great people who treated even the lowest person on the totem pole (undoubtedly me) with respect and dignity.

We’ve changed offices, seen some old friends go and new friends come, had a party or two (and maybe the occasional drink), won many cases (and admittedly lost some cases), won a lot of softball games, had babies, got married, got divorced, and above all learned a lot. But, fifteen plus years later it is remarkable to note, especially in the intervening years of widespread nationwide law firm mergers, defections, closings and the like, that the core of the people at the Firm in 1992 are largely unchanged today. CB is still a place that trades on its people. Whether it is in the way it treats employees and their families, its fellow members of the bar, be it friend or foe, and of course its clients.

In this space, I will post my thoughts on things that touch CB or the profession in general, and provide links to interesting (mostly humorous!) stories about our profession. Hopefully, it will be an enjoyable read, not too serious, and something worth coming back for.

20 years. A pretty damn good accomplishment with a lot of promise for the future.

Since opening the Firm, I married, moved twice, and became the proud father of 3 children, whom I enjoy the pleasure of raising with Martha.

I am thankful for and proud of what we’ve built at CB. While I hear too many lawyers lamenting their experience over the last 20 years or so, what I have had, as the cliche goes, is that I have gotten from it what I have put into it. I have had a chance to explore ideas, learn some craft, create businesses, and earn a living, all in the company daily of brilliant caring people. How good is that?

20 years ago, I had helped start CB, was learning how to litigate (in the fast-paced classroom of the Owens-Illinois case and others) and beginning to fantasize about the business opportunities at the intersection where real estate development meets the financial aspects of environmental remediation. Over the last decade, my partners trusted my judgments on how to turn aspirations toward a viable part of the Firm’s practice and my personal business career. I have seen Jeff Knapp, Andrew Craig, Darin Winick, my clients, and so many others, move forward on successful pathways I’d like to think I helped them chart. In sum, at a relatively young age in this profession, I have enjoyed incredible chances to both give and to receive.

I am energized as Year 21 year commences. I am certain Cuyler Burk is poised at another major jumping off point in its evolution. The market says we’re pretty good at offering clients top-tier quality work, and all of our people deserve to earn a good living, upon which I will insist. But the business plan cannot be to have clients pay for new associates, so they, in turn, can pay off student loans while performing rudimentary document reviews and repackaging old legal research assignments. The reality is that top-notch legal services are in many cases overpriced. Thus, firms like Cuyler Burk will capture increasing market share as corrective action is demanded by the sophisticated legal consumer.

I don’t know where my practice will take me in the next 20 years, but I will work to make it as exciting as the last 20 have been. As long as I am around, which I hope is a long long time, tapping the limits of the Firm’s creativity and courage to express it will be my goals and reasons I wake up every day excited about my career and this Firm..

Thanks to all.

In September I celebrated 16 years as a Cuyler Burk employee, next to Marian our wonderful receptionist, I am proud to say, I am the most senior person on staff.

I started at Cuyler Burk in the summer of 1990 as a temp. I knew WordPerfect 5.1 and this firm in Florham Park (one town over from home, where I was living during summer break between my junior and senior years of college) needed someone who knew WordPerfect 4.2 to fill in. I can downgrade with the best of them…

So I jumped at the chance to make $12/hr — my earlier temp stint at an Asian clothing warehouse (“Preppy Boy!”) was only netting $8.50/hr, so this was a big bump up… and it allowed me to live my credo: no heavy lifting.

I worked for two attorneys, a senior associate and a junior associate that summer, and it was standard office work. I was told I was special since I could stand to work with this senior associate who had a reputation for being difficult; but she and I got along famously, and I learned all about clumsy Club Med vacationers who, once sobered by the mainland, filed slip-and-fall lawsuits hoping to subsidize their vacations. (Do I sound like a defense lawyer or what?)

Summer ended and it was back to college. I was a communications and theatre major with an emphasis on directing TV and Stage, so my senior year was spent directing a mainstage drama and an hour long TV comedy. Graduation came and went, and I was putting the finishing touches on my TV project when the temp agency called and asked if I wanted to go back to Cuyler Burk & Matthews. I said I was flattered they thought of me and I would love to return, but I couldn’t because I had to finish this project for Emmy submission and I was committed to do some semi-pro theatre construction work through the end of July. If they could wait, I’d be interested. They couldn’t wait, and so I missed the boat.

Or so I thought.
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