Madelyn Jaye

“It’s not important to win each small battle. It’s winning the war that counts.” – Madelyn Jaye

Madelyn Jaye, known as MJ around the Mandel Law Firm, believes that a winning effort begins with careful preparation - that the results you achieve are in direct proportion to the effort you apply. Some cases are easy to win. That is not where the challenges of great lawyering lie. There are other cases where success does not come from holding a good hand, but rather in playing a poor hand well. Those cases, and those challenges, bring out the warrior in MJ. She is a fierce competitor practicing by the oft quoted doctrine of Vince Lombardi - “If winning isn't everything, then why do they keep score?”

MJ is a seasoned warrior when it comes to the world of litigation. She has played, and prevailed, in the game of high stakes, high profile, complex litigation, since graduating from the prestigious Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. She has brought the skills she has learned in those fiercely competitive arenas, practicing in the trenches with some of the nation’s foremost litigators, to The Mandel Law Firm with somewhat astonishing success - turning around cases previously thought to be lost causes and winning cases others thought unwinnable.

1. Prevailing in a Federal Court Hague Convention Child Abduction case for a father, against near insurmountable odds by developing a novel theory, upheld at the Second Circuit on appeal, making new law in the Circuit.

2. Prevailing in State Supreme Court in a Divorce action, winning full custody of a three year old little girl for a father in a close call case after a lengthy trial.

Madelyn believes that litigators are first and foremost story tellers. They must convince their audience, whether that audience be a judge, jury, or adversary, that the story they are telling is the only true story and the ending they are proposing the only right ending. MJ brings her experience from the worlds of theater and film (former Art Director Children’s Theater Wing of Croton Shakespeare Festival, Director of Video for Calevision airing of Purchase College’s production of Feydeau’s a Flee in Her Ear and acting in numerous local productions) as well as her background in psychology (Master’s Degree in Art Therapy) to the practice of law. She holds dear the proposition so eloquently put by the renowned author and poet Maya Angelou who said:

“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."

How you make them “feel”, the judge, the jury your adversary and your client, is what litigation, good litigation, is all about.

Madelyn Jaye will make you feel like together you can accomplish exactly what you hope to accomplish, because more often than not, with MJ at the helm, you will