A personal injury and medical malpractice lawyer from East Hills has been named to the New York Super Lawyers list for the third straight year.
Robert Sack, as well as his partners at the New York City firm Salenger, Sack, Kimmel & Bavaro, LLP, were selected from a lengthy process that included peer recognition and personal achievement, according to the Super Lawyers Web site.
The list was published in the Oct. 6 edition of the New York Times Sunday Magazine. Sack was also awarded with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the New York City Trial Lawyers Association last year.
“I think it means that my peers have recognized what I’ve strived to accomplish all these years, that I’m a lawyer who really cares about his clients and that we don’t sacrifice anything except our own time and effort,” Sack said. “That’s what’s really nice about my profession, it’s not like we’re representing AT&T or IBM, we’re representing the everyday person and we change their lives. If, God forbid, someone dies, their families depend on us to make sure they’re taken care of.”
Sack said he first got into law after receiving a parking ticket and successfully defending himself against paying the fine. He enrolled at Brooklyn Law School a short time later.
“It wasn’t a solid red or green, it was a convoluted intersection,” Sack said. “I had a lot of fun, decided to go to law school. I wanted to do something where I would be my own boss, even though I didn’t have any money to buy a business or even invest in a business, so I said if I become a lawyer, eventually I’ll become my own boss.”
Sack said he enjoys the competitive nature of arguing a case, comparing it to his younger days playing basketball at William Howard Taft High School in the Bronx and Hunter College.
“There are a lot of similarities between being a lawyer and a basketball player,” Sack said. “You have to get along with your teammates and co-workers and you have to be ready to anticipate what the defendants are going to do, what their strategy is, and it’s the same thing in basketball.”
After his career at Hunter ended, Sack continued to play basketball competitively around New York City in pick-up games that included Julius Erving, Dave DeBusschere and Tiny Archibald, among others, he said.
Sack was named to the Hunter College Athletics Hall of Fame in 1984.
Over the years, Sack also played on a recreational team that once a year traveled to Sing Sing Correctional Facility to play against a team of inmates.
“In the beginning, they were very, very nice and then there was a revolution of some kind and the games got to be pretty much as you’d expect,” Sack said. “One year we had two [New York football] Giants play with us, and they were diving around on this concrete floor. You expected a prison break at any second.”
Sack has lived with his wife Marlene in the Country Estates neighborhood for the last 37 years, raising two children – daughter Jennifer and son Jon – that were All-County athletes at Roslyn High School before going on to Dartmouth College and Emory University, respectively.
He’s also practiced law for the last 40 years, starting the firm that would eventually become Salenger, Sack, Kimmel & Bavaro, LLP a few years into his career.
“Being able to help people while building a career was very attractive to me, and that’s what I did, and it’s my happily ever after,” Sack said. “We have 10 lawyers together and to each one we give the same advice. The best saying I’ve ever heard in life is, ‘when you fail to prepare, you’re preparing to fail.’ It’s analogous to life, to sports, it’s everything.”
Sack has been admitted to the bar in New York and United States federal courts, and serves on the board of governors and as a member of the New York State Bar Association and the New York State Trial Lawyers Association.
Sack has also taught business law at Queensborough Community College and given lectures on the New York State Bar Association.
“I’m the kind of guy that, if I’m in, I’m in,” Sack said. “I don’t join a committee just to say I’m on a committee. We have meetings, and I rarely miss a meeting because I feel it’s an obligation for me to be there.”
