Cynthia Attard

Cynthia Attard did not start there. Out of Hofstra she went into corporate tax law, expecting to “change the world with numbers,” she says, and found it dry and repetitive. Wanting to be home for her four children, she left law to serve as a Nassau County police officer for about five years. When she returned, she went straight to trial work at a personal injury firm in Queens. A judge’s advice stuck with her: new trial lawyers shake like a leaf, but after one trial they are experts.

Her police background. Attard says personal injury cases are built on police reports, and she knows the procedures officers and firefighters must follow because she followed them on the street. That lets her relate to officers at depositions, whether they are clients or defendants; one firefighter was surprised she knew the administrative guidelines he was supposed to observe. She also carried the conviction of police work into court. “I was just able to transplant whatever aggression and conviction I had as a police officer,” she says.

From her early plaintiff days, Attard remembers a low-policy case she doubted would go anywhere: a client developed a toe infection from a nail salon pedicure, her altered gait led to back herniations and she needed epidurals and about 10 months of treatment. Attard questioned whether the firm really wanted her to present it, but she made the argument with a straight face at the settlement conference. “Are you kidding me?” the judge asked. “I wish I was,” she replied. The case settled without a trial.

Attard’s advice centers on jury selection, because that is where a case is won. She pulls up a chair and talks to prospective jurors face to face rather than standing over them, since the last thing they want is to feel intimidated or talked down to. She tells newer attorneys to take time to learn their clients and the law, crediting the people around her for her own success. Her final message: do not settle for low numbers. “Hold your ground, because there’s money to be made out there,” she says.

Attard is the managing trial attorney at the Brooklyn office of Ikhilov & Associates, where she concentrates on complex personal injury and medical malpractice cases. Her work also spans mass torts, automobile negligence, slip and fall incidents and product liability matters in federal and state courts. Results credited to her include a $5 million settlement for a back injury from a car accident, a $3.3 million settlement for a taxi cab passenger and a $2.6 million settlement for a passenger rear-ended in a truck accident. The firm’s website is eiesq.com.

Attard earned her J.D. from Hofstra University School of Law in 1996, where she served on the Environmental Law Review. Before law school she completed a Bachelor of Arts in psychology and worked with the Office of Crime Victim Advocacy in Nassau County, New York. She has practiced for more than 20 years on both sides of the aisle, including in-house work for a large insurance carrier before moving to plaintiff work. Outside the courtroom she raises four children and trains her young Thoroughbred for hunting and jumping events on Long Island.