We offer more than reach and experience. We offer a strategic partnership.
Instead of taking cookie-cutter approaches to legal counsel and churning files with bloated teams, we work to learn each client’s needs and goals, and then plot the most effective course to get them there. To do that, our more than 400 attorneys can collaborate creatively—across practice groups and offices—to provide exactly (and only) the services our clients need.
Service Model Highlights
We regularly represent leading organizations and businesses as amici in federal and state appellate courts across our national footprint. Given the depth of our appellate team and our attorneys’ breadth of knowledge, we can write amicus curiae briefs on a wide range of issues. We have also been extremely successful in securing support from amici for our clients’ appeals and for raising key arguments on important legal and public policy considerations.
Led by a trio of attorneys with a combined 90 years of legal experience and a record of establishing case law favorable to our clients, Goldberg Segalla’s nationwide appellate practice offers much more than a last line of defense. Our appellate attorneys—many of whom are former Appellate Division staff attorneys and U.S. District and Courts of Appeals clerks—are key partners from the initial stages of litigation, bringing a unique skill set, trial assistance, formidable writing talents, and a global perspective to every matter.
We advise companies and organizations of all sizes—from major multinational entities and their boards of directors to closely held family businesses—on all aspects of corporate law and business operations. That includes business entity selection, formation, and financing; preparation of governing documents and advisement on management structure and growth strategies; preparation of standardized business documents and corporate contracts, including non-disclosure and non-compete agreements; real estate leasing and development; guidance through shareholder disputes and other issues; growth, finance, and asset protection; counsel on franchise, strategic alliance, and joint venture agreements; venture capital investments and private equity placements; intellectual property licensing, portfolio management, and litigation; and succession planning and corporate dissolution.
Our internationally acclaimed Global Insurance Services group includes one of the largest collections of experienced and dedicated insurance coverage attorneys in existence. With an extensive geographic reach and formidable experience in areas including first-party property damage and catastrophic events, cyber risks, environmental and mass torts, class actions, ERISA, bad faith and extracontractual litigation, and more, our team serves as regional and nationwide coverage counsel for some of the country’s largest insurers.
Our multidisciplinary and nationwide Cyber Incident Response team can mobilize at a moment’s notice to manage every aspect of a company’s response to a data breach or other cyber incident, or to work seamlessly as an auxiliary to a client’s CSIRT. With experience managing incidents for leading companies in entertainment, financial services, insurance, technology, and other industries, our services include coordination of forensic investigations, evidence preservation, liaising with law enforcement, advising on multi-state notification requirements, responding to Office for Civil Rights investigations and other regulatory and administrative inquiries, and public and media relations. In the event of high-stakes lawsuits related to a breach, we bring decades of trial experience and specialty knowledge of complex issues related to emerging technologies, data protection standards, and regulatory requirements. We also train clients in data breach preparedness, preventive measures, and response protocols, and perform privacy and security assessments to help companies improve data management and privacy practices as well as incident response.
Goldberg Segalla has long served reinsurers and excess insurance providers in the U.S. and abroad, drawing on our combined trial and coverage experience to monitor the defense of insureds provided by primary carriers. We perform an independent review and analysis of the case including all underlying facts and circumstances, closely follow the progress of the claim, offer an informed opinion of the insured’s liability and damages exposure, and estimate the cost of defending the claim through litigation to resolution.
Taking an adversarial role in these circumstances only leads to inefficiencies and higher legal spending. We bring the same collaborative philosophy that powers our performance as coverage or trial counsel to our work as monitoring counsel, maintaining an open dialogue and always acting in coordination with defense counsel, participating at mediations, monitoring depositions and trial, and recommending strategies to cut exposure as appropriate, while keeping our clients apprised of all significant developments. At the same time, we stand ready to make the critical difference if our clients call on us to parachute into trial or offer appellate counsel.
Mass tort litigation in pharmaceuticals, medical devices, asbestos, talc, and other areas presents a steep challenge to companies and insurers, calling for counsel experienced in the detailed investigation and development of the underlying facts, as well as consistent assimilation and presentation of that narrative in a strategic defense. In these situations, a National Coordinating Counsel makes the critical difference, drawing on the ability to grasp and process an immense volume of underlying facts as well as to develop those facts into a compelling narrative and present the same in a winning defense. The role of National Coordinating Counsel is as varied as the clients who are considering retaining someone to serve in that capacity. The organization of the defense may be brief and temporary or may last the duration of the litigation.
Collections, contracts, construction, corporate and governance issues, cybersecurity, day-to-day operations, employment practices and human resources, intellectual property, OSHA, real estate and leasing, transactions and financing, workers’ compensation. Small and medium-sized businesses face the same types of issues as the world’s biggest companies, only on a reduced scale. Most law firms that can handle all these diverse needs, though, offer the same rigid fee structures, forcing smaller clients to pick and choose services, often overpaying while leaving themselves exposed in critical areas.
We developed a flexible service model to provide better, leaner, and more affordable legal services to clients who were poorly served by other Big Law billing structures and siloed approaches. Emerging companies, family businesses, and startups that don’t have a need for full-time in-house counsel; lean and collaborative management teams that do without GCs or CLOs; partnerships that can’t run to law firms for guidance on each and every issue: This is for you. Starting with a comprehensive understanding of your business—where you’re coming from, and where you’re headed—we’ll handle all of your core legal needs, and offer day-to-day counseling on operations, risk management, emerging issues, and more. And we’ll do it all at a fixed price that fits your budget, on an annual retainer or per-diem basis. That means 24/7 access to the full experience and capabilities of an international firm, comprising over 400 attorneys with a reputation for collaboration across numerous practice areas—but with just one lawyer as your point of access.
Intimately familiar with crashes, accidents, and large-scale data breaches, we’ve been the first call for businesses in transportation, manufacturing, construction, and other industries facing critical and catastrophic incidents that require an immediate, effective, and strategic response. Led by a nationwide investigations counsel drawing on experience as an FBI investigator and office head, and comprising teams of veteran trial attorneys with deep knowledge in areas including products, trucking, aviation, large-scale construction projects, and cybersecurity, we offer our clients peace of mind by restoring control to unexpected situations. On call 24/7, we regularly deploy to critical incidents and catastrophic accident scenes to provide timely and crucial information to key stakeholders, and to ensure the necessary investigative and expert resources are being engaged, key witnesses are identified, and critical evidence and documents are preserved.
We provide proactive counsel and experienced representation for clients whose products or services are monitored by an array of federal, state, and international regulations. Whether advising on compliance issues, appearing before regulatory authorities, or responding to an inquiry, our attorneys focus on minimizing risk and maintaining positive working relationships with regulatory bodies. This includes counseling insurers and reinsurers throughout the U.S. and Europe on meeting the full range of domestic and international regulatory challenges they face; advising manufacturers, importers, distributors, retailers, and others on issues concerns products under the jurisdiction of federal safety agencies including the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), and Food and Drug Administration (FDA); representing numerous businesses in matters of cross-border and international trade; and advising clients in a wide range of industries on ever-evolving state and federal regulations. We also provide guidance concerning entity formation, licensing, mergers, acquisitions, asset acquisitions, and other transactions for insurance agents and brokers, managing general agents, reinsurance brokers, independent adjusters, third-party administrators, and excess and surplus lines brokers.
We have extensive experience handling some of the most complex risk management challenges in the world. Clients from the United States, Europe, and Asia regularly ask our attorneys for help in identifying risks and forensic analysis of the cause and scope of potential losses in a business context. These risks may include everything from product liability issues to employment and labor concerns, cybersecurity, OSHA, intellectual property matters, and the daily operational issues of a business. Our approach to risk management begins with coming on-site to learn everything we can about a client’s operations, environment, risk appetite, philosophies, and long-term goals. We provide top-to-bottom review of employment and worksite safety polices; develop essential policies and procedures that affect day-to-day business operations, including policies regarding document retention and destruction; perform cybersecurity assessments, provide cyber remediation consolation and cyber legal compliance advice, develop and train Cyber Incident Response Teams (CIRTs), and conduct tabletop exercises and war games; analyze intellectual property portfolios and develop trade secret protections; assess insurance coverage and exposures; and help manufacturers develop tailored Product Safety Committees and Product Liability Prevention Programs, as well as review instruction manuals, warnings, warranties, and advertising materials.
From the beginning, we have eschewed the high minimum billing hour standards of nearly all Big Law firm and instead worked to reduce each client’s overall legal spending. We do this by drawing on deep knowledge of our clients’ industries as well as their individual priorities, serious trial acumen, and experience managing litigation on a mass, nationwide scale—as well as by working internally to alleviate the pressures that have so long driven lawyers to overbill, churn files, and pursue questionable litigation strategies in the first place.
We excel at high-volume litigation strategy and creative solutions, using large-scale data collection to continuously improve processes and find new efficiencies. We cultivate exceptionally strong partnerships with numerous businesses and insurers in a claims management capacity by assessing known, anticipated, and difficult-to-calculate risks, evaluating existing litigation plans and claims-management procedures, developing consensus-based and measurable strategies, and continuing to tailor them over time to improve everything from cycle time to process effectiveness to outcomes. Our firm prides itself on a robust and calculable internal quality assurance program that is aligned with the needs of our clients and enhances our contribution to organizational risk management lines of defense. In addition to our work for insurers, we have developed and facilitated industry-wide joint defense programs for major league sports organizations, created a pioneering Opioid Impact Program to reduce the costs of court-ordered opioid medication prescriptions for employers in numerous industries, and created an Integrated Disability and Workforce Management Program to reduce the incidence of workers’ compensation claims by proactively addressing employment practices.
In recognition of our commitment to our founding principles of client service, our firm was one of the first in the nation to be invited into the Council for Ethical Billing, now known as the Claims and Litigation Management Alliance, or CLM. Today, over 60 Goldberg Segalla attorneys are members of CLM—including one Certified Litigation Management Professional (CLMP) and Certified Claims Professional (CCP) in Cyber Claims and a former chair of the CLM Professional Liability Committee—and many others are members of the Defense Research Institute (DRI), the International Association of Defense Counsel (IADC), the Federation of Defense and Corporate Counsel (FDCC), and other legal and industry organizations dedicated to reducing claims and advancing our clients’ broader interests through advocacy and judicial, statutory, and regulatory reform.
Led by a former inside counsel who spent 20 years handling high-value and -volume transactions for a multibillion-dollar global company, our transactions team represents clients through intricate matters such as mergers, acquisitions, divestures, and reorganizations, as well as franchise agreements, joint ventures, all types of financing, intellectual property concerns, and other aspects of business and corporate law and governance.
Founded by a group of renowned trial lawyers, we have a reputation as one of the country’s top firms for high-stakes litigation and trials. With dedicated and experienced trial attorneys in all 21 of our offices, that reputation is built on a record of precedent-setting victories over aggressive plaintiffs’ lawyers in some of the country’s toughest jurisdictions. We are the go-to firm for many corporations and insurer clients and frequently are asked to parachute in to the most complex cases for trial. Our over 400 attorneys include members of the American College of Trial Lawyers and Trial Lawyers of America, multiple American Board of Trial Advocates (ABOTA) National Trial College graduates and Fellows, and have also won numerous best trial lawyer of the year awards.