About Karen Winner
Karen Winner is known as a national consumer advocate for people who use courts and lawyers. She has a private practice as an attorney in New York, and also works as a consultant.
Karen is known for her pioneering work creating the first-ever consumer protections in New York for people who hire divorce attorneys.
She is the nationally-acclaimed author of Divorced From Justice: The Abuse of Women and Children by Divorce Lawyers and Judges – published in 1996 by ReganBooks/HarperCollins. Her book was endorsed by famed trial attorney Gerry Spence and U.S. Congressman Jerrold Nadler).
Before she became a lawyer, while working as a policy analyst for the NYC Department of Consumer Affairs, Karen, on assignment, discovered a surprising link between the divorce process in New York and poor economic outcomes for women. Her investigation for Consumer Affairs uncovered a legal culture that enables unscrupulous divorce lawyers to manipulate divorce cases and use deceptive fee practices to financially exploit their middle class and upper class clients, with disastrous results for women. As a solution, Karen created the Statement of Client Rights, which includes requirement for a written retainer agreement, now embodied in New York’s Part 1400 Rules, and which has evolved through more than a thousand judicial decisions. It establishes consumer rights for clients in divorce lawyers in New York – such as the right to a written, itemized billing invoice every 60 days, and forbids lawyers from foreclosing on a former client’s primary home.
In 2018, Karen used the consumer protections she created, in a suit she fought and won against a national law firm, Boies Schiller Flexner LLP. The Firm had taken a charging lien of $900,000 against their former client’s home in Scarsdale, New York for legal fees allegedly owed for handling her divorce. Karen investigated and found the Firm failed to provide a Statement of Client Rights to its client, and also failed to provide the required protections embodied in the Statement. As a result, the law firm was not entitled to its lien against the divorced woman’s mansion. The court’s decision was 22 pages long and published in the New York Law Journal. View article
Karen Winner’s views on consumer advocacy and government protection for vulnerable court-users such as women and people with disabilities were informed while working for Consumer Advocate Mark Green, who was Commissioner of New York City Department of Consumer Affairs, and a protégé of crusading consumer advocate Ralph Nader.
Karen Winner has worked extensively inside and outside of the media, as a reporter, and as a media spokesperson.
Businesses and individuals rely on Karen Winner as a client advocate and legal strategist to communicate what is in their best interest with their lawyers. With Winner helping them to communicate their views, preferences and concerns with their lawyers, the clients can get the information they need. Because she is a lawyer, she knows the clients’ rights with their lawyers.
Karen Winner has worked on numerous corporate and entertainment matters that appear in the press. Sometimes she is hired to handle media relations on sensitive, legal issues for prominent clients on stories that have appeared in The New York Times, Billboard, People Magazine, among other publications.
Karen Winner has also served as a college instructor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, where she has taught a unique course she created, Financial Fraud in Divorce (along with Business Law).
Currently, Karen Winner is developing an exciting educational website that will offer unique workshops and on-line webinars and informational products for people who use lawyers and the courts.