In only a decade in practice, Sam Ferrara is already emerging as one of Long Island's best young matrimonial attorneys. With a youthful Pacino-esque charisma and true sense of duty to his clients and the law, the 36-year-old partner has established an identity and a solid reputation. No small feat in a firm of 30 attorneys. "I've been very fortunate," says Ferrara, "to have mentors, to be in the right place at the right time."

Peers say there's more to it than that: Ferrara is tenacious and aggressive, a confident trial attorney, who has an almost solemn reverence for his work. "Divorce attorneys get knocked around a bit, but I think what we do is honorable."

Growing up outside Rochester, and attending college in Boston, Ferrara has an upstate plain-spokenness about him, which has served him well in the contentious world he practices in today. Ambitious but unpretentious, "no two ways about it, I was a working class-kid," Ferrara worked his way through college by managing restaurants and selling t-shirts to businesses.

That sense of initiative hasn't left him: "I'm pretty good on my feet. My idea of a lawyer was a trial lawyer, and that's the basis for my work today." Ferrara received valuable experience working with matrimonial law leader Stephen Schlissel, while at a Mineola firm, his first job out of Hofstra Law School. ("He was an amazing mentor and teacher.")

Ferrara joined Stephen J. Eisman in 1996, and two years ago they helped expand the 5-attorney matrimonial department at the Fensterman firm, which occupies much of the first floor of the old Sperry/United Nations complex in Lake Success.

When he isnÃ't working - or teaching night classes at one of three law schools - Ferrara focuses on his family, including his wife and two young children, at their West Islip, New York home.