An intellectually gifted and generous leader with unquestioned integrity, Elliot Samuelson is universally regarded as one of the top attorneys of divorce law - in New York and nationally -- for most of his four-decade career. Indeed, in a profession occupied by thousands of sharp minds, Samuelson stands out, in part because he is a leading author on divorce-law issues - but also because of his longtime influence on other attorneys. He has mentored many of today's leaders of the matrimonial bar, and all of them - some are now competitors -- respect him to this day. His books - for both attorneys and clients - reside on shelves almost everywhere. The Brooklyn native says, jokingly, as a young attorney "I was young and foolish" when divorce law, then a relatively staid corner of the law, beckoned. "I wanted to help people deal with real and immediate problems - there was nothing abstract about it," says Samuelson. Always curious and progressive (he uses e-mail liberally, unlike most senior attorneys), Samuelson was at the epicenter of the revolutionary changes in divorce law in the 1970s and 80s, making it a dynamic area of the law. Today, in his fifth decade of practice, Samuelson practices with his daughter Wendy and respected attorney Richard Hause, and their Garden City office handles scores of complex and challenging cases each year. He has been a resident of Melville, N.Y., for 35 years.