The Firm and its flat fee structure

JF Bonder PLLC was founded in 2013 and specializes in providing General Counsel, real estate and corporate legal services for a fixed annual fee to real estate companies in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. The firm’s clients are primarily companies that cannot or do not want to carry the overhead of an in-house counsel and companies with small in-house legal departments that do not want to increase their in-house counsel overhead.

Our way of doing business is straight forward: we will first learn your organization structure and spend the time necessary to meet with your employees to establish good lines of communications, evaluate how you use outside counsel, and then provide all real estate and corporate legal services you request, and some we suggest, for a flat annual fee that is less than the cost of a junior in-house attorney. No exceptions (other than tax) to the type or amount of work. Twenty-five percent of our fee is payable on the first day of each calendar quarter for work during that quarter and the fee agreement is terminable by you or the firm for any reason or no reason at any time prior to the date an installment payment is due, without penalty or future obligation.

Joel Bonder has worked as an in-house attorney in the Washington, D.C. commercial and multifamily real estate industry for 30 years, primarily as General Counsel to three companies, First Potomac Realty Trust, a publicly traded office and business park real estate investment trust (REIT), Apartment Investment and Management Company (Aimco), a publicly traded apartment REIT, and National Corporation for Housing Partnerships, a private owner of multifamily housing throughout the United States, and its publicly traded property management company, NHP Incorporated (NHP). He knows from an insider’s perspective how real estate companies and their properties operate, the day-to-day and periodic legal issues that need to be addressed proactively in the real estate business, and the questions, large and small, frequently faced and asked by your officers and employees. And, from having allocated work between in-house and outside counsel, Mr. Bonder understands what tasks are best left to an attorney who prioritizes knowing your company as if it were his own and how the cost of outside counsel can often cause unwanted surprises or holds you back from attending to that long-delayed project.