Small on purpose.
Established on purpose.
Clemenza Law is a private-client practice serving founders, established talent, and mission-driven organizations. Established enough to have seen your situation before, and small enough that the attorney who takes your call is the one who does the work.
Anthony Clemenza
Anthony Clemenza has practiced law in New York for nearly twenty years. He is the managing partner of The Clemenza Law Group and the general counsel of more than twenty operating and philanthropic companies across eight sectors.
That second seat is what makes the first one different. Across those companies he has done exactly what a general counsel does — entity architecture, commercial and vendor agreements, intellectual property, employment, governance, and risk — while also sitting in the principal’s chair when the invoice came due. He has negotiated the technology stack from the buyer’s side, built the intake, approval, escalation, and board-record systems those companies run on, and decided in each case what stayed in-house and what went to outside counsel. Most lawyers argue one side of that table. He has had to win both.
The three tracks in this program are not marketing segments — they are three things he runs. He founded The Legacy Foundation while in law school and has chaired its 501(c)(3) board for twenty years, and founded Meridian Philanthropic to serve grantmakers. He has been a licensed New York real estate broker since 2010 and board president of an 89-residence self-managed Florida cooperative since 2016. Entertainment and media is one of the firm’s three core practice areas, backed by founded ventures in talent management and the performing arts.
He read comparative constitutional law at the University of Vienna School of Law in a course taught by U.S. Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., took his Juris Doctor at Hofstra University’s Maurice A. Deane School of Law as Business Editor of the Hofstra Law Review, and holds a B.B.A. in finance and marketing from Loyola University Maryland. He also ships production software and AI systems — so when the question is AI governance, the answer comes from someone who has built the pipeline, not just read about it.
- Bar Admission
- New York — admitted 2009, active and in good standing
- Experience
- Nearly twenty years in practice; general counsel across more than twenty companies in eight sectors
- Education
- J.D., Hofstra University (Maurice A. Deane) — Hofstra Law Review, Business Editor
- International Study
- Comparative constitutional law, University of Vienna School of Law — taught by Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr.
- Board Leadership
- Founder and board chairman of a 501(c)(3) for twenty years; cooperative board president since 2016
- Writing
- Published author on legal and governance subjects
- Also
- Licensed New York real estate broker; builds production software and AI systems
Our Values
What guides every engagement.
Judgment, Not Just Paper
The document is the last step. The advice that matters comes earlier: what to sign, what to walk from, what to fix while it’s cheap.
Plain Boundaries
What an engagement excludes is put in writing beside what it includes. Most disagreements between a client and a firm begin as a difference of belief about scope.
A Deliberately Narrow Practice
We take the work we do well. When a matter sits outside it, you hear that on the first call, along with the name of someone who handles it every day.
One Standard
A small nonprofit and a funded company get the same attention, the same turnaround, and the same seriousness. The fee differs; the work does not.
Why the practice is shaped this way
There is a version of this page that lists years, names a few clients, and photographs a bookcase. We have read that page too. Here is the one we would rather write.
The working library · New York
This firm was built around a complaint we kept hearing from people who could plainly afford lawyers. They were not avoiding legal advice because it was expensive. They were avoiding it because they could not tell what any single question would cost, and a question of unknown price gets saved rather than asked. So the questions pile up, sorted by how expensive they feel, and the ones that feel cheap get answered by whoever is standing nearby. Those are usually the ones that mattered.
The billable hour bills you for hesitation. We priced this practice so that hesitating costs you nothing, and then we published the prices, because a fee you have to ask for is a fee you are meant to feel awkward about.
That decision has consequences, and we would rather state them than have you discover them. The practice is narrow on purpose — companies, creative careers, nonprofits and foundations, and the artificial-intelligence questions all three now arrive with. A firm that fields weekly questions has to actually know your world, and nobody knows six of them. We are admitted in New York. We do not appear in court. When a matter belongs to counsel we are not, you hear that on the first call rather than three invoices later.
It also helps that we have spent years on your side of the desk. Our founding partner serves as general counsel to more than twenty operating and philanthropic companies, and has approved the legal budget as often as he has submitted one. That is an unglamorous credential, and it is the one that shows up most in the work: we know which points are worth the fight, which are worth a phone call, and which a reasonable person signs.
None of this is a promise about your result. No lawyer can make one, and a lawyer who does is telling you something useful about themselves. What we can promise is the part that is actually within our control — that you will know what something costs before it starts, that you will hear from a person within one business day, and that when the honest answer is that you do not need us, that is the answer you will get.
Anthony Clemenza
Founding Partner, The Clemenza Law Group PLLC
In their words
In their words, with their permission.
“I used to save up legal questions until they were worth an invoice. Now I just ask. Half of what Anthony does for us never shows up as a document — it’s the call before the call, the ‘don’t sign that yet.’ Our board treats him as part of the company, because he is.”
Founder & CEO, technology company, New York
General Counsel
“Visa petitions run on evidence, and nobody had ever looked at my career as evidence before. He built the case around work I’d half forgotten I’d done. I got my approval, but what I keep telling other artists is: I finally understood my own file.”
Recording artist and touring performer
Artist Visas
“The lawyers I’d used before would win a point that cost me the relationship. He runs a management company too, so he knows which terms actually matter at this stage of a career and which ones you trade to keep the room warm. My manager and my counsel finally stopped having to translate for each other.”
Performing artist, New York
Talent & Entertainment
“Our board meetings used to have a permanent agenda item called ‘legal questions we can’t afford to ask.’ Retiring that line item changed how we govern. He treats a $2M nonprofit with the same seriousness as his companies, and he bills like he actually wants us to call.”
Board Member, New York 501(c)(3)
Nonprofit Governance
“We’d been meaning to set up the foundation for six years. What we didn’t expect was a lawyer who asked what we intended to fund before he asked how to structure it. He advises grantmakers through his philanthropic firm, so our governance came from someone who has watched these boards behave in year five — not just someone who knows how to get the determination letter.”
Founder, family private foundation
Foundations
“A decade in, he’s read every contract I’ve signed. There’s a kind of speed that only comes from that … I forward an email with no context and get back ‘this is fine’ or ‘call me.’ Both answers are worth the retainer.”
Private client, New York
Private Client
“Every AI conversation we’d had was either hype or fear. This was the first one with a checklist. We shipped the tool, we kept our customer promises, and when a client’s security team asked hard questions, our answers were already written.”
COO, professional services firm
AI Governance
The Maison Connection
Clemenza Law Group shares ownership with Maison Talent Collective, a talent management company — so our counsel is informed by the daily practice of managing creative careers, and for clients who work with both, manager and counsel move as one coordinated team.
The firm and Maison Talent Collective are separate companies. Legal services are provided solely by The Clemenza Law Group PLLC; management services are not legal services and are not covered by attorney-client privilege. Clients who engage both receive written disclosure.
Written disclosure
Meridian Philanthropic is a philanthropic services firm owned by this firm’s founder. It is not a law firm, and its administration, governance-operations, and advisory services are not legal services. Where a client engages both firms, the client agreement states which services are legal services provided by this firm and which are not, and you are always free to engage any counsel or any administrator you choose — or none at all.
meridianphilanthropic.comPrior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.