Alyce Wittenstein

Alyce Wittenstein took an unconventional route. After studying film production and political science at Boston University, she wrote, produced and directed 16 mm science fiction films with social justice themes that screened at festivals in Europe and Japan; her father, Frederick Wittenstein, acted in them and helped finance them. When he needed someone to manage his personal injury office, he recruited her in 1985 as a managing paralegal. A decade later she enrolled at CUNY School of Law, whose civil rights-focused curriculum she calls “very, very radical.”

Beyond negotiation skills she describes as “really good,” Alyce says her strength is that she genuinely loves her clients. Many are new immigrants without much education, and she has found that what they want most is to be treated like people, something she says few attorneys have on their radar. She gauges each client and adjusts, speaking at a higher level with those who are bright and working hard to explain things to others without talking down. “That’s what brings me joy from this work: working with people,” she says.

Alyce remembers a young medical student badly hurt as a passenger in a single-vehicle rollover van accident. The rental car company refused to offer anything to settle, and she says they “just perceived her as some kind of a lowlife,” an attitude nothing supported; the client was sophisticated, bright and well-spoken. Alyce second-chaired the trial, and right after her client testified the defense offered a large sum to settle. The young African American woman had simply been herself on the stand, and that is what won the settlement.

Alyce’s closing thought is about contingency fees. As the daughter of a personal injury lawyer, she watched efforts to eliminate them, which she says hold corporations in check and let people without money take on big companies. She argues New York should allow contingency fees in divorce cases, where the less wealthy spouse, usually the woman, often cannot afford a lawyer; getting grants to handle such cases is on her bucket list. She also wrote a “Closing Argument” essay for Trial Lawyer’s Journal on pursuing justice.

Wittenstein & Wittenstein, Esqs., P.C., is a personal injury firm in Forest Hills, in New York City, with a history of more than 60 years. Alyce’s father, Frederick M. Wittenstein, founded it as Friedman & Wittenstein on Utica Avenue in Brooklyn after established firms would not hire Jewish lawyers and a stint at a collection firm that jailed debtors pushed him to the other side. Alyce became a partner in 2000, prompting the rebranding. The firm handles personal injury, civil rights and medical malpractice cases, and its website is wittenstein.com.

Alyce earned a B.S. from Boston University in 1983 and her J.D. from the City University of New York School of Law in 1998, in its 13th graduating class. At CUNY she was a teaching assistant for civil rights leader Haywood Burns, founded a Human Rights Delegation to Haiti and studied constitutional law with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Admitted to the New York State Bar in 1999, she is a member of the New York State Bar Association and is especially passionate about advocating for injured children.