My Venice landlord wanted to buy me out of my lease. It’s difficult to find lawyers who work in this arena. Luckily, I found Eric.
I’d done the research and the negotiation myself and had bagged a good deal, but needed to make sure the legalese-filled 8 page contract was solid and that there was no way the landlord could trick me or otherwise screw me over.
I called Eric’s office once and did not get a reply. So the next day I called again, left word with his secretary again and also asked for his direct email address. That worked. Once contact was established, he was very quick to reply to all communications.
He was very considerate of my budget, even saying that he works fast and thorough so as not to eat into my buyout money too much. I told him my main concerns about the contract. He worked very quickly and made many changes to the contract and asked me if I wanted him to explain those changes or not. (If not, I probably would have save some money, but I opted to learn about the contract and feel it was money well spent.) He also asked for specific things (ie, contract in Word format instead of PDF, so that he could work faster so I could save money. Love it.)
He also added a special clause for me at my request, he made sure that all the negotiation points I’d asked for were really what I wanted. He also gave me great advice so that moving forward I would stay in a good position for the contract to go through with no problems. He said, “Keep your nose clean, so they can’t evict you for something stupid.” (As this was one of my concerns.)
Time was of the essence for my particular case and Eric totally delivered. Only a couple days later when it was time to settle up did he tell me that his wife had had a baby the day after he’d finalized my contract. So when he asked for a week or so in order to settle up the refund on my unused retainer, of course I was happy to give the new dad that leeway.
Highly recommend him for tenant buyouts. Email him directly for best results. And catch him when his wife isn’t giving birth. And best of all – he congratulated me for negotiating a great deal (it really was), saying that he wouldn’t have been able to get me much more than I had negotiated for myself. That kind of compliment from a lawyer means something.
