Why You Should Read This Before Retaining Offit Kurman
A factual account by a former client with opinions clearly labeled. Full disclaimer.
Based on direct personal experience, Offit Kurman does not care about its clients and will protect its lawyers even in cases of gross misconduct. I sent three formal escalations about serious misconduct by Elliot J. Rosner to Maurice Offit, Theodore Offit, Howard Kurman, William Cannon, Robert Skinner, Russell Berger, John Hurley, and B. Bortz. What I got back was silence.
I contacted seven senior people. Five never responded. The Managing Principal wrote one sentence and disappeared. The General Counsel, Russell B. Berger, defended Mr. Rosner's misconduct, never apologized, and called my plans for transparency "threats." In my opinion, a General Counsel who silences clients instead of holding attorneys accountable is complicit in the misconduct he is covering for.
Not one person at Offit Kurman ever apologized. Not for the six months of silence. Not for the threats. Not for the blame-shifting. Not for a year of zero progress. Not for the broken promise to "circle back." Instead, their General Counsel wrote that the fees were reasonable and the work was "good time." A year of abandoning a client's case is "good time." In my opinion, that is not just incompetence — it is contempt for the people who pay this firm's bills.
They also never sent the legally required notice of my right to arbitrate fees — not when the relationship ended, not during the dispute, not ever — even though their own General Counsel was actively corresponding with me about the fees and I referenced the arbitration program by name. In my opinion, that was not an oversight. It was a firm that did not want its client to know his rights.
What Mr. Rosner did is documented at elliotrosner.com. This page is about what happened when I told the firm's leadership — and they did nothing.
The People I Contacted
Three escalations. Fourteen months. These are the people I contacted:
Photos sourced from offitkurman.com, where they are published publicly.
The Three Escalations Nobody Acted On
First Escalation (January 2024)
Within weeks of engaging Offit Kurman, I raised concerns about Mr. Rosner's missed commitments and slow communication. The matter was quietly handed back to Mr. Rosner to resolve. Nothing changed.
Second Escalation (September 4, 2024)
Mr. Rosner took a three-week vacation without telling me, ignored multiple emails and texts, and went silent. I wrote directly to the founders — Maurice L. Offit, Theodore A. Offit, and Howard K. Kurman — with a detailed timeline.
Not one of them responded. Instead, the firm handed the complaint right back to the person I was complaining about. His response was to threaten me:
He called my escalation a "stunt." He promised to respond to emails within 24–48 hours. He wrote that he was "100% committed." Then he went silent for six months.
Third Escalation (April 7, 2025)
Six months of silence. Then Mr. Rosner blamed me for the lack of progress. I sent my third escalation — to Theodore Offit, Robert Skinner, and Managing Principal William Cannon III. I explicitly requested that the matter not be handed back to Mr. Rosner.
Cannon responded with one sentence:
Nobody circled back. Not that week. Not ever.
The Broken Promise
On April 15, I wrote to Cannon again: nobody had followed up. A year and a half with the firm. Zero case progress. An attorney who threatened me and then blamed me for the delays. Cannon did not respond.
On April 23, I wrote to Cannon, Theodore Offit, and Skinner — copying Berger, Hurley, Kurman, and Bortz. Two weeks had passed since Cannon's promise. The only thing I had received was an invoice — for the email in which Mr. Rosner blamed me for the case stalling.
Theodore Offit did not respond. Skinner did not respond. Kurman did not respond. Cannon did not respond. Hurley did not respond. Bortz did not respond.
The General Counsel's Response
On April 27 — twenty days after my third escalation and only after I threatened formal complaints — Russell B. Berger, the firm's General Counsel, finally broke the silence. His first question was whether I had a lawyer. Not "what happened." Not "how can we fix this." Whether I had a lawyer. In my opinion, that is the response of a firm preparing to defend itself, not a firm that gives a damn about its client.
Over the next three weeks, Berger defended Mr. Rosner's conduct without a shred of self-reflection. He never acknowledged what happened. He never expressed concern. He circled the wagons.
"Good Time"
On our May 7 call, Berger told me the case had been "moving well up until April 2024." Let that sink in. He was admitting — casually — that from April 2024 to April 2025, a full year, my case sat dead while the firm collected fees. And in his view, that was fine. In writing:
A year of abandoning a client's case is "good time." In my opinion, that is not a defense — it is an admission that this firm does not know the difference between serving a client and billing one.
"Threats"
When I told Berger I intended to share my experience publicly, he called it a threat:
A factual account of a client's experience is not a "threat." It is not "disparaging." It is exactly what the First Amendment and the Consumer Review Fairness Act exist to protect. The fact that Offit Kurman's General Counsel tried to intimidate me into silence tells you, in my opinion, that this firm knows its conduct cannot survive public scrutiny. This page is my answer.
What Was Never Said
I searched every email between myself and Offit Kurman — January 2024 through May 2025. The words "apologize," "apology," "sorry," and "regret" appear zero times. From anyone. For anything. Not even once. In my opinion, that is not an oversight — it is a choice. This firm is incapable of admitting fault.
The Pattern
This was not one bad attorney. In my opinion, this was a firm-wide failure — deliberate, repeated, and at every level. Founders, principals, Managing Principal, General Counsel. The same pattern every time:
Client raises concerns. Firm ignores them or hands them back to the accused attorney. Attorney threatens client. Managing Principal lies about follow-up. General Counsel defends everything and tries to silence the client. Nobody took ownership. Nobody apologized. In my opinion, Offit Kurman did not just fail me — the firm actively chose to protect an attorney whose conduct, in my experience, was disgraceful.
They Also Violated Their Legal Obligations
Under New York's Part 137 Fee Dispute Resolution Program, a law firm is required to provide clients with a written "Notice of Client's Right to Arbitrate" when the relationship ends or a fee dispute arises. This is mandatory.
Offit Kurman never sent me this notice. Not when Mr. Rosner was terminated. Not when the fee dispute arose. Not once in any email, letter, or communication — and I have searched every one of them.
Their own Terms & Conditions of Representation (Clause 7, effective August 1, 2022) explicitly reference Part 137 and state that the notice is "available upon request or online." But "available upon request" does not satisfy the obligation. The firm is required to proactively provide it. They did not.
What makes this worse: their General Counsel, Russell B. Berger, received my May 7 email in which I explicitly referenced Part 137 by name. He responded to that email. He never mentioned my right to arbitrate. The firm's chief legal officer — the person responsible for knowing these rules — chose not to inform me of my rights during an active fee dispute. In my opinion, that was deliberate.
The Outcome
I pulled my case in April 2025. Even leaving was obstructed — Mr. Rosner refused to transfer the case file to my new attorney, forcing me to collect and deliver it myself. Under competent counsel, the case was resolved to my satisfaction in a fraction of the time it sat dead at Offit Kurman.
For the full account of Mr. Rosner's conduct, see elliotrosner.com.
Documentation
Every fact on this page is backed by emails, text messages, invoices, and court filings in my possession. Every person named here was contacted at their Offit Kurman email address, and those emails are preserved in full. If anyone named here disputes any factual statement, I welcome the opportunity to present the documentation.