{"id":352850,"date":"2026-09-21T21:58:14","date_gmt":"2026-09-21T21:58:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/352850\/"},"modified":"2026-09-21T21:58:14","modified_gmt":"2026-09-21T21:58:14","slug":"brothers-behind-liakas-law-say-they-use-personal-injury-litigation-to-look-out-for-the-little-guy-and-secure-change-for-the-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/352850\/","title":{"rendered":"Brothers behind Liakas Law say they use personal injury litigation to \u2018look out for the little guy\u2019 \u2014 and secure change for the people"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brothers Dean, Nicholas, and Stephen Liakas said they have always cared deeply about supporting their community and looking out for others since they were kids growing up together in New Jersey. It felt natural then, they said, to pursue careers in personal injury law and combine forces by opening up their own firm to use the law to advocate for the underdog.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to help the little man and hold people accountable,\u201d Stephen Liakas said. \u201cWe decided, why don\u2019t we just open up our own personal injury firm and do it?\u201d<\/p>\n

And so Liakas Law<\/a> was born. Many personal injury firms focus on settling matters and shy away from taking cases to trial, the Liakases said. That\u2019s the opposite of their firm\u2019s philosophy, which the brothers described as taking on big, difficult cases \u2014 especially ones that could change the law, public policy, or a community\u2019s material conditions \u2014 and litigating them to a win at trial.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was some point where Stephen was a practicing attorney, Dean was in law school or just about to become a practicing attorney, and we all kind of looked at each other and said, \u2018We have an opportunity where we could do this on our own,\u201d Nicholas Liakas told amNewYork Law on choosing to pivot towards their own practice where they could achieve the change they wanted to see in the world.<\/p>\n

Sitting on the stoop of Dean and Stephen Liakas\u2019s shared Hoboken apartment roughly 15 years ago, the three brothers, all of whom had begun embarking on careers in personal injury law, decided to take the leap.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe all kind of looked at each other and said, \u2018Hey, empty your pockets, put it on the table, whatever you got. That\u2019s what we\u2019re going to start our firm with,\u2019\u201d Nicholas Liakas said. \u201cAnd that\u2019s pretty much what we did. We emptied out our bank accounts and literally emptied our pockets, liike, \u2018Hey, what do you have? Do we have money for a copier?\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"The Liakas Law team \u2013 Former judge Mark Partnow, Dean Liakas, Paul Bitetti, Stephen Liakas and Nicholas Liakas \u2013 sit in their office\u2019s mock courtroom jury box.<\/p>\n

The three brothers turned into founding partners in 2014 when they opened the doors of Liakas Law on their own. Since then, they\u2019ve grown to a firm with dozens of attorneys that\u2019s successfully handled thousands of clients\u2019 cases \u2013 including a slew of high-profile ones and those that have accomplished their mission of altering the law and policy, referred to as impact litigation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we do differently than other firms is we have cases that will change public policy and will change the way the laws are written,\u201d Nicholas Liakas said. \u201cWe may have a case of an individual, a very serious case where we need to deliver for that family or for that person, but we also see that going along with our philosophy of \u2018How do we protect the next person?\u2019<\/p>\n

Some of the cases that fall into that bucket include litigation on behalf of injured workers that have altered state and federal safety regulations and their representation of five people who were killed in a Bronx fire that spurred new federal legislation establishing mandatory safety standards for space heaters.<\/p>\n

They have also helped fix firehouse staffing issues after litigating on behalf of Staten Island firefighters injured at work and contributed to the push to pass the Child Protective Services Transformation Act after advocating on behalf of an eight-year-old autistic boy who was neglected, tortured, and died while caught up in the Child Protective Services system.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And, when litigating on behalf of the family of a man with severe mental issues who had not received proper care and then committed suicide in a New Jersey jail, the Liakases won significant changes in the correctional facility. Those changes included ensuring incarcerated people receive proper care, increased lighting, removal of anchoring points where people were killing themselves.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe changed the law,\u201d said Stephen Liakas of the case. \u201cThings like that really excite me and make me proud.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\u2018We care about the next person\u2019
\n\"\"Nicholas Liakas and Mark Partnow stand on either side of a client.Photo provided by Liakas Law<\/p>\n

They\u2019ve also spurred supervisory and safety changes in a large New York-area hospital system to improve patient protection in a case where a physician was held liable for sexually assaulting their clients.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing able to affect how hospitals run to make women inside of those hospitals safer means a lot,\u201d Nicholas Liakas said. \u201cI have a mother, I have a wife, I have a family. I have to rely that they\u2019re safe when they go to the hospital. If I have to rely on that, if I can do something to ensure that to a better degree, I\u2019m certainly going to do it. I think it just makes the city safer. It makes our work have even more meaning beyond the immense meaning that it already carries.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Of course, the brothers said, not every case changes the law.\n<\/p>\n

They care deeply about working on \u2014 and have won an array of multi-million dollar settlements and verdicts for people and families \u2014 simply because they were in a life-altering crash or were injured on the job, results that don\u2019t necessarily have an impact beyond that person\u2019s life. <\/p>\n

But it\u2019s cases that have that long-term, beyond-the-courtroom impact that are some of the most important to the Liakas\u2019 mission and keep driving them forward.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re on this side trying to do what we can do on one individual case,\u201d Nicholas Liakas said. \u201cI think if we can prevent bad things from happening, that\u2019s where a trial lawyer really becomes important. That\u2019s the place of the trial lawyer in society: to check these insurance carriers, or these big corporations that will otherwise go unchecked.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cA trial lawyer should be a protector, someone who stands up for people, someone who protects the next person,\u201d he added. \u201cWe care about the next person.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Trial Team Co-Chair Paul Bitetti stand with a client.Photo provided by Liakas Law<\/p>\n

That philosophy also makes them a formidable courtroom opponent, they say \u2014 and makes their name one that scares insurance companies and defense firms, which helps them get the outcomes they want for their clients.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of firms are settlement firms. Insurance companies will look at the firm, and they\u2019ll say, \u2018Oh, this is just a settlement firm. We don\u2019t have to worry about them.\u2019 Or they\u2019ll say, \u2018Okay, this firm actually tries cases,\u2019\u201d Dean Liakas said. \u201cThat\u2019s what we\u2019re talking about with that change and helping these communities by being known as a trial firm. I think that is what separates us as a firm.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDefense attorneys know when they\u2019re against a settlement firm,\u201d Nicholas Liakas added. \u201cWhen they get the reports from their doctors, they know what it\u2019s going to say before it\u2019s even sent to them because it\u2019s gonna say the same thing as the last one that doctor wrote, since they use the same doctors, they use the same experts, they use the same everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

The brothers say they\u2019re committed to using their record and actions to change the perception of personal injury law at large \u2013 they hope to shift people\u2019s understanding of personal injury attorneys as people on big billboards chasing down money to people who care deeply about their clients and work for large-scale change.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything you see about personal injury is about grabbing money. That\u2019s not what it\u2019s all about. It is about money because that\u2019s what our recourse is, and that\u2019s how we can try to rebuild someone\u2019s life and make their life easier if they\u2019ve suffered an immeasurable loss,\u201d Nicholas Liakas said. \u201cBut I think an important aspect of how we\u2019ve developed our firm, and what really sets us apart, is we are not a mill where we\u2019re just churning cases.\u201d<\/p>\n

The brothers say they are also going against the current trend of leaning on artificial intelligence and taking on massive caseloads to process more people faster for the sake of counting numbers. That\u2019s impersonal, they told amNewYork Law, and they are in the business of keeping personal injury truly personal.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe saw from other places that we may have worked or interned at how they were running things. We were able to take bits and pieces and see what was good, bad, how they dealt with clients, how they dealt with their files, and I think we all just said, \u2018We can sharpen this tool, we can do it better and better represent these individuals,\u2019\u201d Dean Liakas said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

From what their staff says, it seems they\u2019ve been successful in that effort.\n<\/p>\n

Three years ago, they brought on now-Liakas Law Trial Team Co-Chair Paul Bitetti and former Brooklyn Supreme Court Judge Mark Partnow, both of whom said they were attracted to Liakas Law because of this philosophy.<\/p>\n

\u201cPersonal injury seemed like the best area of the law to help someone going against these massive entities, whether it\u2019s a corporation, the City of New York, or large insurance companies,\u201d Bitetti said. \u201cYou are fighting for the underdog, and that\u2019s something that\u2019s always driven me, and something I really liked about Liakas Law from the beginning.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Bitetti in the office\u2019s mock courtroom.Photo by Isabella Gallo<\/p>\n

Partnow, who spent roughly 20 years on the bench, retired at 70 to join Liakas Law\u2019s trial team. He said he made the choice to join the Liakases after assessing the brothers\u2019 attorneys as they repeatedly appeared before him in his courtroom, saying it was always a \u201cpleasure\u201d to see how prepared and knowledgeable the firm was in trials and hearings.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI spent many, many years as a Kings County Supreme Court Judge. I\u2019ve tried hundreds of cases, and I\u2019ve dealt with many, many law firms,\u201d Partnow said. \u201cAs a judge the attorneys from Liakas Law stood out, apart from all other law firms. There\u2019s something special about Liakas Law Firm \u2013 the caliber of their attorneys, the way they care about their clients, the way they try a case \u2026 When an attorney from Liakas Law walks into the courthouse, you know that that attorney is going to be prepared.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been absolutely gratifying,\u201d Partnow said of returning to the other side of the courtroom bench via the Liakas firm. \u201cI love being here. I\u2019m proud of what I do, and I\u2019m proud of what the attorneys here at Liakas Law do every day.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Partnow sits on the mock courtroom\u2019s judge bench.Photo by Isabella Gallo<\/p>\n

It\u2019s this community-centered approach outside the courtroom and hyper-prepared, aggressive approach within it that the Liakases credit to their success. When you grow a reputation in a community \u2013 whether that be within a certain field, like the construction workers\u2019 union community, or intentionally growing roots in certain geographic communities, like the Bronx \u2013 that community refers you to the next person in it that needs help.<\/p>\n

\u201cOver the years that we\u2019ve been open, we\u2019ve been really in these communities,\u201d Nicholas Liakas said. \u201cSo, when something catastrophic does happen in a community, the family, whether they reach out to their community leaders or whoever they know for help, our name pops up.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that our investments in the community have really helped us get those policy-changing cases or catastrophic cases that really do affect communities,\u201d he added. \u201cWhen people see you can deliver results, word spreads.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brothers Dean, Nicholas, and Stephen Liakas said they have always cared deeply about supporting their community and looking…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":352851,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2710,37301,9,11,10,2152],"class_list":["post-352850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-law","tag-liakas-law","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-personal-injury"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=352850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352850\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/352851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=352850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=352850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=352850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}