Over the last year, as the New York City office market saw a resurgence, the big players made a flurry of deals. One was 2 Park Avenue, which traded to Haddad Brands for $357 million. A few blocks away, 250 Park traded for $320 million. Office-to-residential conversions, meanwhile, spurred transactions in quieter commercial centers, like at 77 Water Street, which was sold to Vanbarton for about $95 million.
Lawyers played a crucial role in getting those deals across the finish line for the marquee names who made them, doing a lot more than handling the paperwork.
The Real Deal ranked law firms by dollar volume of closed sales in Manhattan, Queens and Brooklyn, between Aug. 1, 2024, of last year and July 31, 2025. In total, TRD analyzed nearly 41,000 commercial and residential sales in New York, totaling more than $80.2 billion.
Fried Frank Harris Shriver & Jacobson took the top spot at $3.2 billion in just 42 deals. The firm nearly tripled its volume, as measured by TRD, from last year to this year.
A reenergized real estate climate certainly had a hand in that. But the firm instead touted its long-running relationships in the industry as the key to growth.
“Even though New York is a big city, in terms of complex, big transactions, you tend to see the same people over and over again,” Jonathan Mechanic, chairman of Fried Frank’s real estate department, said. The firm frequently represents JP Morgan, Blackstone and RXR, among others.
For example, the morning before an interview with TRD, Mechanic had a meeting with a lender and a borrower. Although he was representing the borrower that day, he had previously represented the lender. That gave the whole interaction an additional level of trust.
“There are a lot of lawyers who may be good technical lawyers out there,” said Michael Werner, Fried Frank’s co-chair. “But it’s the relationships that you have with folks around the table that really facilitate getting a complicated deal done quickly, efficiently and fairly.”
A rising market
The rise in office sales benefited other big commercial firms as well. Greenberg Traurig nearly doubled its deal count, from 10 to 18, and tripled its volume, surging 32 spots from last year’s ranking to this year’s list.
“We’re seeing competitive bidding on assets that are for sale, which we hadn’t seen since pre-Covid,” Stephen Rabinowitz, co-chair of the firm’s real estate practice at Greenberg Traurig, said.
Beyond the sales volume, commercial lawyers often spend a good deal of time on loan workouts, negotiating new terms for a borrower when things haven’t gone according to plan. Although interest rate declines have helped, they haven’t solved borrowers’ problems.
“There’s still quite a lot of distressed debt working its way through the system,” Rabinowitz said.
In the residential world, interest rate declines have also been meaningful.
“The sheer news of the interest rate [decline] or the feeling that it’s going to go down or keep further going down has already spurred a huge significant uptick in my recent volume,” Jeremy Wang, principal at Yeung & Wang, said. The firm completed 599 deals during the year.
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Changes to the financing landscape also resulted in more lending on the residential side. Not long ago, about 70 percent of the residential deals Romer Debbas worked on were cash deals — now that number has come down to about 50 percent, said Michael Romer, the firm’s managing partner.
“We closed more large residential transactions this year than we have in past years and that’s a positive sign showing that there’s movement, showing that investors are comfortable investing in our market,” Romer said. The firm took the second spot in the overall rankings with 482 deals.
Those economic and cultural conditions have also changed how residential buyers approach sales. Beyond paperwork, a resi attorney’s job can involve a fair amount of emotional management.
“It’s a lot more, in my experience, hand-holding,” said Sharon Darouvar, of Konner Gershburg Melnick Darouvar, which sits third on the list. “Buyers are more cautious about making a purchase, but it’s a lot more: How do you feel about this? Are you confident in the diligence? Are you comfortable with the terms and representations of the contract?”
A changing landscape
Law may be one of the more traditional professions, but it’s already being upended by new technologies.
For some, AI is the driving force. The attorneys at Greenberg Traurig do work for major non-real estate companies. Those firms are already using artificial intelligence in some of their work and have begun asking for AI solutions from their legal teams. Greenberg Traurig is now beginning to use an in-house AI system.
“It’s like having an additional person there to check your writing, check for internal inconsistencies,” Rabinowitz said. “Even that has already started to have an impact. It gives us an opportunity to feel a lot more confident in the precision of the work we’re producing.”
Technology is also affecting lawyers’ work in more subtle ways. Just the process of getting documents signed is now seeing less friction.
“I would say the norm in Manhattan now is not to have a live closing,” said Wang.
But these developments are unlikely to change some things. New York still mandates legal representation for buyers and sellers in every real estate transfer.
When the next big deal comes down the pike, New York’s attorneys will be there to grab it.
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