For many years, we and our partners have handled prenuptial and marital agreements, divorce and annulment proceedings, alimony and child support matters, child custody and guardianship disputes, child abduction claims, and the recognition in Israel of foreign family-law judgments.
Attorney Artur Blaer (born 1976) graduated with honors from the Faculty of Law at the College of Management. Prior to receiving his license, he worked as a teaching assistant to professors delivering both mandatory and elective courses at the University of Haifa, the Carmel Academic Center, and the College of Management.
He completed an internship in the commercial litigation department of the major Tel Aviv law firm “M. Seligman” and previously served as a clerk to a District Court judge in the Tel Aviv District.
Attorney Blaer and his firm focus on immigration and repatriation, Israeli citizenship, family law, and commercial law. He has extensive experience handling high-stakes and complex matters before courts at all levels, as well as in pre-trial proceedings, mediation, and arbitration. He is fluent in Russian, Hebrew, and English.
Our firm assists clients with all aspects of Israeli inheritance and succession law:
A dedicated area of our firm’s practice is Israeli family law:
Our office assists clients with all aspects of Israeli corporate and commercial law:
The first meeting with a lawyer is serious work that requires time and full attention. A good lawyer must fully immerse themselves in the case, ask difficult—and sometimes uncomfortable—questions, and identify the key details and nuances. If a consultation in a complex matter feels too easy or “comfortable,” it is most likely not a real consultation but a sales pitch. Thorough, responsible legal advice costs money. So-called “free consultations” have little to do with genuine legal consultation.
A competent and experienced lawyer should provide an honest, responsible assessment of your risks, draw your attention to the complexities, nuances, and obvious obstacles in the case, and explain how that legal assessment may affect your life—how long the process is likely to take, how much it may cost, how complex it may be, and what to expect at each stage.
The era of generalists is over. In today’s age of information overload, there are virtually no attorneys who can handle every type of matter professionally. Lawyers who truly cover all areas of human activity simply do not exist. When looking for legal counsel, start with specialization and a clear practice focus. You want an attorney who spends eight hours a day solving problems in one specific, well-defined field. You can learn what a lawyer handles on the lawyer’s profile page or the firm’s website, as well as on the firm’s pages on Facebook, Instagram, and elsewhere.
If you realize that you are or may be in a situation where you could make a serious legal mistake and do not fully understand the consequences of that mistake, know this: you need a lawyer.
It’s hard to overestimate the importance of the first meeting. An initial consultation with an attorney is real work that takes your time and emotional energy. The point is that, at the first meeting, a good attorney must truly immerse themselves in your case—completely.
Not everyone enjoys going into detail. A lawyer should ask tough questions, return to uncomfortable topics, ask again when necessary, and seek clarifications. In short, during a thorough, substantive consultation, a good attorney has to “draw everything out of you.”
If, in a complex matter, the consultation feels too smooth and comfortable and the attorney suggests everything will be rosy and easy, keep this in mind: that is not a consultation—it’s a sales pitch.
A real attorney must point out nuances and obvious difficulties in the case, assess your chances as honestly as possible, explain how long the process may take, how many judicial and administrative stages you may need to go through together, and what approximate costs to expect.
A consultation—let us repeat—is serious, responsible work. That is why a real consultation always costs money. So-called “free consultations” have nothing to do with genuine consultations. For more details, see the video:
You should get a general sense of the likely costs of your case at the very first consultation. An attorney’s fee depends on a number of factors. The main components in determining the cost of legal assistance are:
At the first consultation, the attorney should outline the anticipated expenses, taking into account things like the likelihood of appeals, motions and challenges, bonds, potential court costs payable to the opposing party, any success-based (contingency) fee percentage, and so on. You should have a rough idea of how much a long journey through administrative or judicial labyrinths might cost.
Courts in Israel work very slowly. A civil (financial) dispute in a court of first instance can easily last 2-5 years. In the court of appeals, it can take 1-2 years. If you are facing a complex civil status issue in Israel, court and administrative proceedings can last 5-8 years. Relatively simple cases are resolved in 1-3 years. Complex family court cases also last for years.
Here, it is important to obtain information during the initial consultation. The lawyer should inform you of all possible options for resolving the conflict. It is not always possible to expect a complete victory and the best possible outcome. Sometimes, only relative and more modest solutions can be expected, and here the task of a decent and experienced lawyer is to explain your real chances to you during the initial meeting.
