ABOUT US
EASY TO WORK WITH. TOUGH TO BEAT.
A warm smile. A friendly greeting.
And the confidence of knowing you picked the right team. This is what you get when you work with KSLN, whether you're meeting with an associate or reviewing strategy with a managing partner. Meet the members of the KSLN team.
OUR HISTORY
Founding partners Pat Kenney, Judi Shelton, and Tom Liptak began the firm in 1994. The three had been partners at one of Buffalo’s large full-service firms. However, they decided to begin their own firm in order to provide a more agile, value-driven focus on insurance defense and coverage. The firm was immediately successful based on this approach. Core clients at the time of the firm’s inception remain to this day, and over the years, many new insurance carriers and claims administrators have come to the firm as clients, and the vast majority remains clients to this day. As the client base grew over the years, the firm grew by combining a commitment to developing new attorneys with the addition of seasoned defense and coverage partners.
As it approached its second decade, the firm began to add new practice areas in a careful, selective approach. The firm grew and diversified by adding known and respected attorneys with successful established practices and excellent reputations in the community. The firm’s additions have historically been the result of identifying attorneys that shared the firm’s philosophies, priorities, and values, rather than by predetermining specific practices areas to target and “acquire.” That approach remains today, and is another reason KSLN differs from many full-service law firms.
The firm’s insurance defense group today is a true full-service practice with well-respected practices devoted to toxic tort defense, medical malpractice defense, trucking and transportation, construction defect, and professional errors and omissions.
On a parallel track with the growth of the firm’s defense groups, the firm grew into a full-service firm with the addition of well-established practices in real estate, trusts, and estates, not-for-profit law, special education, and creditors rights.
The firm also expanded from its original Buffalo office. The firm now has attorneys in offices in New York City, White Plains, Rochester, Syracuse, Corning, Utica, Albany, and Erie, Pennsylvania. We believe we are one of the only – if not the only – law firm with true offices across New York State.