Paul R. Alter

Mr. Paul Alter became involved in his profession because he had the opportunity. While attending college, he was inspired to continue learning and sought out further education through graduate school. Mr. Alter first earned a Bachelor of Arts from Columbia University in 1962 and received a JD at Cornell University in 1965. His first job was with a real estate boutique law firm. He originally wanted to be a transitional lawyer, but his opportunity came in real estate. Since then, he has headed the real estate department of three major law firms.

Mr. Alter’s mother originally encouraged him to get into law or business.  He first started at Columbia as a pre-med student and realized that wasn’t for him by the time he was a sophomore. At that time, he realized practicing law was more of a fit for his interests and skills. Since 2015, he has been a real estate consultant. Prior to this, he was of counsel at Greenberg Traurig, LLP, in which he founded the New York office and real estate department. He was also the co-head of the real estate division at Jones Day and the founder of the real estate department at Kronish Leve. In his career, Mr. Alter served as the chairman of the Young Leadership Federation (now The Jewish Federations of North America).

There were two highlights of Mr. Alter’s career. One was when he represented the purchases of the most expensive property at the time sold in New York which was an office building on Park Avenue. The second was when he represented the entire Lincoln Towers community in the largest co-op conversion in the history of New York, which consisted of 12,000 people living in 4,000 apartments. In his career, he attributes his success to Neil Underberg, who was a prominent lawyer that recently passed away in 2017.