Law Offices of Mario G. Ceste LLC

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The Philosophy of Our Practice
 

We formed our practice after 30 years of corporate experience building businesses in technology driven industries. After living with the business pressures you face everyday and having to deal with many of the same wide range of legal issues, we transitioned into the legal profession. We took with us an appreciation for the viewpoint sitting in your chair.

 

Our goal was to create a law practice which helped the small to medium size business address the legal topics in their businesses with the same sophistication normally enjoyed only by large corporations. We strive for fewer but longer term client relationships. By achieving longer term relationships we can counsel our clients in advance, defining issues, identifying alternatives, and recommending the best steps to protecting their business and creative assets. The clients benefits because our familiarity with their business means we are ready to discuss the current issue in most situations without having to review a tremendous amount of general background information.

 

Individual Personal Attention

 

The central theme in our practice revolves around individual personal attention. Because we maintain a select and limited client base, access and response to our clients is unparalleled. As a client you shouldn't have to deal with the frequent “turn-over” of lawyers handling your file, something small clients often have to settle for when represented by larger firms.

 

We take the time to get to know our clients, their business situations and their individual goals and objectives. To many we have become business advisors as much as legal representatives.

 

Cost Effective

 

Our ability to deliver cost-effective services means that we continually utilize the latest office technologies and keep our overhead costs low. You won’t find our offices in high-rise plush downtown offices with marble lobbies and mahogany desks. Instead, we use the internet to stay in constant communication with our clients, and keep our communications cost low by leveraging email, voice over IP telephone, and e-facsimile technologies. This is why you are almost never billed on an itemized basis for long distance phone calls.

 

Nearly all of our research is done on-line and whenever possible relies on the hundreds of free databases available. However, the quality of our legal research is never compromised, and we maintain memberships with the major law research organizations such as Lexis-Nexis and Westlaw using those resources when necessary.

 

Partnering

 

While our size is small, we can offer the time, energy and scale of a larger team when necessary to advance or protect our client’s interest. We partner with a vast network of our peers, reaching out to specialists who can provide expertise in selected aspects of the cases we handle.

 

By example, recently we defended a client in a licensing dispute. The licensor attempted to disguise their franchise agreement as a trademark license, and sued our client for trademark infringement and breach of contract. The lawsuit also involved a count based on a covenant not to complete. We tapped the resources of a colleague in another firm who specialized in franchise law, which eventually helped identify issues in the original license agreement that could be used to defeat the covenant not to complete.

 

In another matter, the client was sued in an out of state court. Once again tapping our network of peers, we arranged for local counsel in the foreign jurisdiction and we remained in the case as lead counsel.

 

In each of these instances, we achieved for our clients the same scope of representation that a multi-city multi-office law firm could offer. However, since we don’t carry the expensive overhead it is not passed onto our clients on a routine basis in our hourly billing rates. Instead the necessary resources are retained whenever and as needed.

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