Mark Seitelman

Mark E. Seitelman is a trial lawyer in New York, New York, and the principal attorney of Mark E. Seitelman Law Offices, P.C. He represents plaintiffs in personal injury, medical malpractice, and insurance coverage matters throughout New York City and its five boroughs. Over a career spanning more than four decades, he has handled over 10,000 client matters.

Seitelman came to the law through the example of family and community rather than a childhood ambition. An uncle who practiced law and later became a judge was among the role models who pointed him toward the profession. He earned a Bachelor of Arts from Brooklyn College in 1976 and a Juris Doctor from Brooklyn Law School in 1979, and he was admitted to practice in New York in 1980. He is also admitted before other courts, including the United States Supreme Court and the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

After law school, he spent more than a year in the New York court system, serving primarily as law assistant to Acting Supreme Court Justice Aaron D. Bernstein in the Supreme Court of the State of New York, Kings County. There he observed some of the state’s leading personal injury attorneys at trial and received training in civil procedure from inside the courthouse. In 1981, he entered private practice, spending the next six years at Lester Schwab Katz & Dwyer, one of the city’s leading insurance defense firms, where he assisted senior partners in insurance coverage, defense of insurance brokers, personal injury and property damage defense, and products liability. Among the notable matters he handled there was the MGM Grand Hotel fire insurance litigation, a complex case arising from the Las Vegas hotel fire that involved pretrial depositions across the country.

Seitelman later opened his own firm, Mark E. Seitelman Law Offices, P.C., concentrating on plaintiffs’ personal injury work. Having practiced on both the defense and the plaintiff side, and with a background in insurance coverage, he brings that dual perspective to each client’s case. He remains involved in all aspects of a matter, from the initial client meeting through work-up, litigation, trial, arbitration, mediation, appeals, and settlement.

Much of his practice reflects the reality that personal injury litigation is often resolved short of a courtroom trial, through negotiation, mediation before a retired judge, or direct settlement with an insurer. His results include a matter in which a client suffered severe burns when an insecticide can exploded in her kitchen. The manufacturer defaulted and later went out of business, and Seitelman pursued recovery against the grocery store that had sold the product as a distributor in the chain of commerce, arguing that the product relied on an unnecessarily flammable accelerant. That case settled during trial. His documented recoveries span motor vehicle and pedestrian accidents, construction accidents, sidewalk and premises cases, wrongful death, medical malpractice, and insurance coverage disputes.

Seitelman has been listed in New York Super Lawyers from 2006 through 2026 in the areas of plaintiff personal injury, medical malpractice, and insurance coverage, a distinction awarded to less than five percent of attorneys. He holds a lifetime membership in the Million Dollar Advocates Forum, reserved for trial lawyers who have obtained verdicts or settlements in excess of one million dollars, and he carries an AV Preeminent rating of 5.0 out of 5.0 from Martindale-Hubbell. He serves on the Board of Directors of the New York State Trial Lawyers Association, where he continues as a lecturer and chair of continuing legal education courses; he teaches and chairs courses for the New York State Trial Lawyers Institute on trials, civil procedure, advertising, and law office management; and he is a contributing editor and writer to the association’s publication, Bill of Particulars.

Seitelman views personal injury practice as a highly personal profession that demands dedication and a great deal of heart, since the work centers on people at moments of distress rather than on machines or algorithms. He counsels prospective clients to choose a lawyer by speaking with family and friends and seeking references based on their own experiences, rather than responding to advertising.