Two people will work on your case, and neither of them changes. You speak with me. The same attorney handles every one of your hearings — not a different lawyer each time your case is on the calendar, and not somebody handed your file that morning.
That arrangement is deliberate, and it is worth explaining, because almost nobody explains to the person signing a retainer who is actually going to show up. You are allowed to ask. In New York you are entitled to a straight answer, in writing, before your case goes anywhere. This page explains how this office is set up, what to ask any firm you are considering, and what the rules already require somebody to tell you.
How this office is set up
I stay at the office. That is a choice, not an absence.
Hearings consume a day. The Board sets the calendar, hearings are scheduled when they are scheduled, and a lawyer who is appearing all morning is a lawyer whose phone is off all morning. Meanwhile the questions that actually come up in a compensation case rarely wait for a convenient hour: your check did not arrive, the carrier scheduled you for an independent medical examination, your employer is asking when you are coming back, a form showed up in the mail and you do not know what it is. Those need an answer the day you ask, from someone who knows your case — not a message taken by whoever is covering the phones.
So the work is split, and both halves are held constant. I am the one you talk to, and I stay reachable. The same attorney from this office handles your hearings throughout — the one who was there when you testified, who knows what the judge said last time and what the carrier was directed to produce.
We work the file together, and that is the part that makes the arrangement worth anything. Because I am the one on the phone with you, I am the one who hears the things that never make it into a medical report: that your employer is pressuring you to come back early, that the examination lasted four minutes, that you have been paying out of pocket for a medication the carrier says it approved. Those details decide cases, and they are useless sitting in my head. They go into the file and into the hearing. Nothing about your case gets learned twice, and nothing you tell me stops with me.
This is a small firm on Staten Island, and small has trade-offs I would rather name than pretend away. There is no national advertising budget here and no twenty-person intake department. What there is instead: your case does not pass through four people before it reaches the one who will argue it, and the two people it does pass through are the same two from the first call to the last hearing.
Why the same attorney at every hearing matters
A workers’ compensation case is not one event. It is a series of hearings stretched over months and often years, in front of judges who remember what happened at the last one. What carries a case forward is the accumulated record: what you testified to, what your doctor said and when the opinion changed, what the carrier was directed to produce and never did, what the judge warned somebody about last time.
A lawyer covering a hearing for the first time has none of that. They have a file summary and whatever they could read on the way in. They do not know that your treating physician revised his opinion on causal relationship in March, or that you have a second job that belongs in your average weekly wage, or that the carrier has now raised the same argument at three consecutive hearings and lost it twice. They cannot notice that a deadline is running, because they were not there when it started.
Most of the moments that decide a comp case are unglamorous and easy to miss: an objection that has to be raised at the first hearing where all parties are present or it is waived, a request for further action filed before a case is closed, a medical report that has to be in the file before a judge can classify you. Continuity is what makes those visible. It is not a guarantee of anything. It is the difference between a lawyer who knows your case and a lawyer who is reading it.
Virtual hearings have made this easier to overlook. Since the Board moved to appearing by computer or phone by default, arranging for a different lawyer to cover an appearance takes almost nothing — they log in from wherever they happen to be. That convenience is real, and it cuts both ways. It is a good reason to ask, early and specifically, who is going to be on the screen for your case, and whether it will be the same person next time. If you would rather be in the room, you can ask the judge at a hearing to hold the next one in person at a Board location.
The question worth asking a firm is not whose name is on the advertisement. It is whether the lawyer standing up at your hearing is the same lawyer who stood up at the last one, and whether anyone you can actually reach on the phone knows what happened there.
That is the whole pitch. It is not a claim about outcomes. It is a description of who answers the phone and who shows up.
The rest of this page explains how the layers form at firms built differently, what New York requires when a case is split between lawyers, and the questions worth asking before you sign anything.
Advertising reach and courtroom presence are two different things
A law firm can advertise anywhere. A lawyer can only appear where that lawyer is admitted. Those two facts sit in tension, and the way the industry resolves it is with arrangements between firms.
Read the fine print at the bottom of a national firm’s website and you will usually find a sentence in the same family as this one: cases will be handled by attorneys licensed in the local jurisdiction, and cases may be associated with, or referred to, other law firms as co-counsel or referral counsel. Some national operations are built on that model outright, running a recognizable brand across a network of separately owned local firms that take primary responsibility in their own states.
None of that is improper. Lawyers work together on cases all the time, and there are good reasons to bring in someone with a particular expertise. The problem is narrower: a person who chose a firm because of a name they recognized may end up represented by a lawyer they have never heard of, and may not find that out until the day of the hearing.
Where the layers come from
At a high-volume firm the first voice on the phone is usually an intake specialist, not an attorney. The file then moves to a case manager or paralegal who handles the day-to-day contact. An attorney is assigned somewhere in there, and in a state where the firm has no local presence, that attorney may sit at a different firm entirely.
Each handoff is a place where something can be lost: the detail you mentioned on the first call, the reason you think your employer is lying about your start date, the fact that you had a second job. A workers’ compensation case turns on exactly that kind of detail. So does a serious injury case.
The question is not whether a firm is large. Large firms win cases. The question is how many people stand between you and the one who will actually argue it.
What New York requires when a case is split
This is the part most people do not know, and it is the most useful thing on this page.
Under Rule 1.5(g) of the New York Rules of Professional Conduct, a lawyer may not divide a fee with a lawyer at another firm unless three things are true. The division has to be in proportion to the work each one does, or else each lawyer has to assume joint responsibility for the case by a writing given to you. You have to agree to the second lawyer being brought in after full disclosure that the fee will be divided, including the share each lawyer will receive, and your agreement has to be confirmed in writing. And the total fee cannot be excessive.
Read that again, because it is a real right and it is specific. If your case is going to be shared between two firms, you are entitled to be told so, to be told what each firm is getting, and to have it in writing. Not after. Before you agree.
Note also what joint responsibility means in New York. A lawyer who takes it on accepts responsibility for the representation as a whole. That is a meaningful commitment, and it is worth knowing which arrangement you are being offered.
In a comp case, the fee runs through the Board
Workers’ compensation works differently from most legal matters, and the difference protects you.
You do not pay a comp attorney out of pocket, and you do not pay one directly at all. Under Workers’ Compensation Law § 24 a claimant’s attorney fee is not enforceable unless the Board approves it, and charging a fee outside what the Board sets is a misdemeanor. The fee comes out of the award.
Since January 1, 2023 the amount follows a schedule written into the statute rather than an hourly reckoning. Continuing an existing award under § 24(2)(a) carries a fee of one-third of one week’s compensation. Increased awards, schedule loss of use, permanent total disability and death benefits run at fifteen percent of the new money moving under paragraphs (b) through (e). A Section 32 settlement is fifteen percent of the settlement under paragraph (f).
Anything over $1,000 goes on a written application, Form OC-400.1. A fee of $1,000 or less is presented orally on the record. On that form the attorney states the amount, the paragraph of the statute it rests on, the calculation behind it, and a certification that it complies.
Now the part that matters for this page. The statute expressly provides that the form shall not require a description of the services rendered or time records, and the claimant does not sign it. That was not always so — the older application did call for services and hours. It no longer does.
Which means the fee paperwork in your case will not tell you who worked your file, or how much work it took. The number is driven by the award, not by the effort behind it. If you want to know who is actually handling your case, the paperwork will not answer that question for you. You have to ask.
Five questions to ask before you sign anything
Ask these of any firm, including this one. A firm that gives you straight answers is telling you something, and so is one that does not.
- What is the name of the attorney who will appear at my hearing, and what firm does that attorney work for?
- Is my case going to be referred to or shared with any other firm? If so, what is each firm’s share, and will I get that in writing?
- Am I speaking with an attorney right now, or with intake staff?
- When I call in six months with a question about my case, who picks up?
- Has the attorney who will handle my case appeared before this particular Board district, or in this county, before?
Get the first two in writing. You are entitled to the second one in writing under Rule 1.5(g) if a division is actually planned, and any firm should be willing to put the first one in an email.
Frequently asked questions
Is it wrong for a firm to refer my case to another lawyer?
No. Lawyers work together constantly and sometimes the right move is to bring in someone with particular experience. What matters is that you are told, that you agree, and that you know what each lawyer is receiving. New York requires all three.
Will it cost me more if two firms work on my case?
It should not. Rule 1.5(g) requires that the total fee not be excessive, and in a workers’ compensation case the Board approves a single fee out of the award regardless of how many lawyers touched the file. The concern with a split case is not usually the arithmetic. It is accountability, and knowing who is answerable for the work.
I already signed with a big firm. Can I switch?
Generally yes. A client can change attorneys, and in a comp case the Board sorts out how any approved fee is apportioned between the attorneys who did the work. It is worth a conversation before you do anything, so you understand the timing and where your case currently stands.
How do I find out who is actually assigned to me?
Ask, by email, so the answer is in writing. Do not count on the fee paperwork to tell you — in a comp case the fee application no longer requires any description of the work or the time spent on it. Ask for a name, and ask which firm that person works for.
Does a bigger firm have more resources for my case?
Sometimes, and that genuinely matters in certain cases, particularly complex litigation requiring significant expert costs. A routine comp claim or a straightforward injury case is a different animal. The right question is not which firm is bigger but which arrangement puts an experienced attorney in the room who knows your file.
Can I just ask you these questions directly?
Yes. Consultations are free, and you are welcome to ask them before deciding anything. If the answer is that you do not need a lawyer yet, that is what you will hear.
Will the same attorney be at every one of my hearings?
Yes. One attorney from this office is assigned to your case and appears at your hearings throughout. You are not getting a different lawyer each time, and you are not getting someone who received your file that morning. If an unavoidable conflict ever came up on a particular date, you would hear it from me before the hearing, not discover it afterward.
Why don’t you appear at the hearings yourself?
Because then I could not take your call. Hearings are scheduled by the Board and take a morning or a day. If I am at the Board, I am unreachable, and the questions that come up in a comp case — a check that did not arrive, an examination notice, a form you do not recognize — do not keep until tomorrow. Splitting it this way means you always have someone who knows your case and can pick up the phone, and your hearings are always handled by the same attorney rather than passed around. We work the file together: what you tell me goes into the case, because I am the one who heard it.
How do I ask another firm this without being rude?
You are not being rude. You are asking who your lawyer is. Two questions do most of the work: “Who will appear at my hearings, and will it be the same person every time?” and “If I call with a question, who actually answers, and how quickly?” A firm that handles this well will answer plainly and may already have it in the retainer. Hesitation, or a general reassurance about the team, is itself the answer. Ask for it in writing either way.
Talk to us
If you are trying to decide who should handle a work injury or an accident case, call the office. You will get an actual conversation about your situation, not a script. In a workers’ compensation case there is nothing to pay up front — the fee is applied for and approved by the Board out of the award, based on the work performed.
The information on this page is general and is not legal advice. Reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship.