Five disciplines.
One way of working.

When the government is on the other side, experience is not a luxury. It is the entire game.

The firm has defended more than a thousand criminal matters over three decades — in New York's state courts, in all four federal districts of New York, and now in Washington and Philadelphia. That depth changes how a case is handled from the first phone call: what to say, what never to say, when to engage prosecutors quietly, and when to force them to prove every element to twelve strangers.

Many of the firm's best results are invisible — investigations that ended without charges, indictments that were never returned. The ones that are visible include full acquittals after trial and dismissals of every count.

Explore the Criminal Defense practice →

Opposing counsel behaves differently when they know your lawyer will actually try the case.

Most civil disputes settle. The question is on whose terms. The firm litigates business, construction, and contract disputes in state and federal court with the posture that produces leverage: discovery aimed at trial themes, motion practice that narrows the field, and a negotiating position built on the credible willingness to pick a jury.

The same approach serves clients in high-conflict matrimonial litigation, where financial complexity and personal stakes collide — and where Mr. Santoro's accounting training is often the difference in tracing what others would rather keep obscure.

A tax case is a numbers case. Your lawyer should be able to read them without an interpreter.

Before law school, Mr. Santoro earned a degree in accounting from New York University — and tax matters at the firm are handled accordingly. He is admitted to the United States Tax Court and to practice before the Internal Revenue Service, and defends criminal tax prosecutions in state and federal court.

On the criminal side, the firm defends allegations of tax evasion, tax fraud, employment-tax (941) violations, and sales-tax theft — matters where an early, credible command of the financial record can determine whether a case is ever charged. On the civil side, it represents taxpayers in examinations, appeals, and Tax Court litigation.

The deal memo is easy. Protecting the artist when the money arrives is the hard part.

For over two decades the firm has represented recording artists, producers, filmmakers, and models — negotiating the contracts that define careers and litigating when those contracts are broken. The practice runs from recording, publishing, and management agreements to film production deals and modeling contracts.

Entertainment disputes reward the firm's two temperaments: the negotiator who closes the deal without burning the relationship, and the trial lawyer who is perfectly willing to burn it when the client has been wronged.

An appeal is not a second trial. It is a different discipline — won on the record, the standard of review, and the brief.

The firm briefs and argues appeals in the state appellate courts and before eight federal courts of appeals — criminal and civil alike. Appellate work rewards what the firm already is: precise, prepared, and unwilling to concede a point that the record does not compel. Whether attacking a judgment or defending one, the work begins the same way — a complete command of the record and of the standard of review that governs every issue.

Starting from the top: the firm is admitted to the Bar of the Supreme Court of the United States — the summit of a roster that includes eight federal circuits and the state appellate benches.

Because the firm tries cases, it briefs them differently. Trial lawyers know which errors actually moved the verdict and which are harmless on their face; appellate judges know the difference too. The firm also serves as appellate counsel alongside trial teams — preserving issues while the record is still being made, when it matters most.

Explore the map of the firm’s appellate admissions →