Interviewer: Why would hiring an attorney make it more advantageous to an individual? So because a lot of people feel like they can do the stuff on their own and I think a lot of people say “Well, I’m the landlord and I’ve been handling this for the past 30 years. Why do I need an attorney now?” Glen Malia: The answer to the question is yes. Absolutely, a landlord can handle an eviction themselves if they know what they’re doing. But some of my best clients are the people who tried to do it themselves and things got really messed up and they came to me to help fix the problem that they had created by trying to do it themselves. The law is just so specific, everything’s got to be done in a certain way and an experienced lawyer who knows what they’re doing. If the other side, if the tenant hires a lawyer, an individual may not know how to question. If the case has to go to trial, you do questioning, you may not know how to put exhibits and other things of that nature and to a large extent, the non-trained person is at a serious disadvantage particularly if the tenant hires a lawyer, was also at disadvantage in the court room because as I said, one thinks it’s a very specific statute and the courts bend over backwards to help the tenant. An Attorney Knows The Procedural Intricacies Required to Handle a Landlord / Tenant Case Outside of that, another benefit of hiring a lawyer is that most courts meet during the day, some maybe meet at night but most of them meet during the day. As a landlord, if an attorney is representing you, the attorney can appear in court and you don’t have to go to court. The only time you have to go to court would be if there is an actual trial and you’ve got to testify. So, hiring an attorney gives someone to do a job for and the job should get done right if you hire the right attorney. And it’s something you can just, sort of, give off to somebody else and you can let them do it. Hiring an Attorney to Do an Eviction is the Same as Hiring an Expert to Do Things Only an Expert Can Do It’s kind of like many other things when you’re a business owner, most business owners, they can do almost anything in their business but do you do anything in your business? Do you file your own tax returns? I mean yes, we can all file our own tax returns but many people will spend the many on accountant to do the tax returns to make sure it’s done right, to make sure something that doesn’t come back to haunt you; same thing with the evicting a tenant. Electricity, many of us can do electricity ourselves now forgetting about the laws that require you to use a licensed electrician but you’re hiring electrician to get it done to do it right. So, in that respect, hiring a lawyer to do the eviction is really no different than hiring an expert to do things that the expert can do, the expert can do better and more efficiently, more effectively and he can help make sure that you as the landlord get things done right and things don’t come back to haunt you. Notable Case History of a Landlord / Tenant Dispute in New York Interviewer: Are there any particular cases in regard to landlord cases that you can think of that are kind of more like a unique or maybe like a personal victory to you? Glen Malia: In recent time, I had a hard fought out matter with a tenant who had a subsidized lease. She got free legal service attorney and my client wanted to terminate the lease because they want to rehab the building and completely redo the building invented out for like a lot more rent. And as I said, it was hard fought out. I took it over right from another attorney who’d started the matter, he’d just screwed up on the matter, he had to withdraw the proceedings and the client then contacted me. Following Due Process in the Matters of Eviction Can be Rewarding I took it right from the very get go, doing the Notice of Termination, making sure that the Notice of Termination was done properly, was properly served and then, I did the paperwork which was challenged by the legal services attorney but the court ruled in my favor. And ultimately, we had a trial and the court ruled in my client’s favor and things of that nature. That is the one I can think of right now that is, like, felt the most -- it’s kind of like the most rewarding in terms of having a hard fought out battle with another attorney who was raising, semi-legitimate point and convincing the judge that the eviction shouldn’t go through and ultimately, the eviction went through. |