EDITOR'S NOTE: Steve Eisman died in November 2015 following complications from sinus surgery. He was 61. He was in the prime of his career, just this year serving as president of the Nassau County Bar Association. He was inducted into the Ten Leaders of Divorce Law of Long Island in 2007. The entire legal community of Long Island was deeply saddened by his death. He was by all accounts a first-rate example of professional leadership in divorce law. His profile below:
Steven Eisman is one of the best known and most successful matrimonial attorneys on Long Island today. An experienced courtroom and appellate lawyer who displays equal measures of energy, competitiveness and polish, the 60-year-old Long Island native heads both the 8-attorney matrimonial-law team and the entire 14-lawyer litigation department at the influential Abrams Fensterman firm, based in Lake Success. Eisman, a name partner from the day he joined the practice ten years ago, has helped the firm in a powerful expansion, from 17 lawyers in 2002 to 60 today, catapulting the Abrams Fensterman firm into one of the top firms for complex litigation in the region, particularly in matrimonial and health-care law. "A lot of people deserve credit for that," says Eisman. "We're a diverse firm with tremendous resources." Further, Eisman is regarded as a knowledgeable attorney on the effects and applications of new technologies in the law, particularly as new media such as email and video recordings are presented as evidence at trial.
Growing up in Nassau County, Eisman says it was his mother's employment at a law firm, together with courtroom serials such as "Perry Mason" that spurred him into the law. He went on to St. John's Law School, where "I prepared for a career in the courtroom from the start. I knew right away what I wanted to do." He promptly joined a small criminal-defense firm, "learning the ropes" in courtrooms in the Bronx, Manhattan and Nassau. Several years later he worked for a Nassau County Court Judge writing on and reviewing major cases. "It all was excellent training: First I learned the techniques in the courtroom, and then I focused on the intellectual basis for everything I did." Confident and competitive, Eisman co-founded a small litigation firm in Mineola, and over the next 17 years he handled "criminal-defense and divorce cases of every type imaginable." Still, he focused increasingly on complex, highly contested divorce matters.
For the last decade divorce litigation has been "95% of what I do." In 2002 Eisman's team - including Samuel Ferrara, a member of Ten Leaders Age 45 & Under - jumped to the Abrams Fensterman firm, bolstering both the firm's litigation and divorce practices. Like many of the firm's partners, Eisman today is an influential member of both the New York legal community and regional politic; he is involved in many civic causes (Kiwanis, The County Bar's "We Care" Foundation, e.g.) and has lectured on technology issues before Nassau County Matrimonial Judges and the Bar Association on numerous occasions. Thanks in part to Eisman, the firm leverages technology more aggressively than most - "everyone here has an iPhone and an iPad; we're almost always available."
An avid golfer and a lifelong Yankee fan, Eisman and his wife Kathy reside in Nassau County. The Eisman name may become something of a legal brand name: His oldest child and only son graduated from Columbia University Law School, and is now an associate attorney at Davis Polk and his oldest daughter is an Assistant District Attorney in Nassau County.
