Yules & Yules, LLC is dedicated to providing sophisticated legal services in a boutique setting. We provide personalized service from competent, experienced and responsive professionals. Our entrepreneurial culture fosters proactive and creative solutions in all our undertakings. We pride ourselves on being results orientated, respectful of our client’s budgetary constraints and being available at all times.
In all litigation assignments, we begin with the end in mind. Our client’s goal is our goal, whether it is resolution by mediation or victory by verdict. We evaluate each claim, the defenses thereto, and formulate a litigation plan and budget to accomplish our client’s objective.
Our wealth management clients will find that they will be enriched, personally and professionally, as a result of working with us. We strive to bring simplicity and harmony to the wealth management process, whether it is estate planning, portfolio management, asset protection, philanthropy or business succession planning.
Jurisdictions Served
Yules & Yules services all of Connecticut and the New York City metropolitan area and Long Island (i.e., the counties of Bronx, Kings, Nassau, New York, Queens, Suffolk, and Westchester). As geographical distances in New England are short, from New Haven we can quickly get to Manhattan either by train or car.
How We Handle Litigation Matters
Because we are a small firm, each case is handled by our senior attorney, Robert B. Yules, with the assistance from an associate and a paralegal. This hands on approach by a senior attorney differs from the way that most cases are worked in large Connecticut and New York firms. In those firms a different lawyer handles each motion, deposition, pretrial, et cetera. Accordingly, there is no one attorney who is familiar with the case’s history before an important event, such as an arbitration, mediation or trial. This large firm case handling method often produces undesirable results. At Yules & Yules, our most senior counsel is involved with each case.
We are very sensitive about spending a client’s money. Prior to filing pleadings or initiating written or oral discovery, we put in writing what we intend to do and obtain our client’s permission to do it. While most of our clients have written guidelines, the most important guideline to us is not to spend a client’s money without permission.
Firm Resources
The Law Library
The quality of lawyering is often dependent upon the legal research resources available to an attorney. Yules & Yules has an extensive collection of hardbound legal treatises, including one of the largest private collections of products liability, insurance, transportation and wealth management treatises. For computerized legal research the firm uses Westlaw.
State of the Art Office Technology
Our office has achieved a high level of efficiency and productivity by investing in the latest computer hardware and software. Our firm uses Microsoft Office Small Business Edition on our server and workstations. We manage our documents with WORLDOX GX2, a sophisticated document management program. For time, billing and accounting, we use LexisNexis' PC Law Pro.
Work Force Diversity
Over the years we have had the honor and privilege of employing men and women with many diverse limitations, including speech pathologies, growth disorders and mobility restrictions. They have contributed to our success and have enriched us by making us more sensitive and compassionate persons.
Firm History
The Early Years
Herman Yules, after graduating from Yale College in 1933 and the George Washington University School of Law in 1937, opened an office for the general practice of law in his hometown of Manchester, Connecticut in 1938. For the next 55 years he practiced law in Connecticut, eventually being joined by his son, Robert B. Yules, in 1984.
As was the custom in the 1930s through 1960s, Attorney Yules had a general practice in which he represented individuals and corporations in business succession planning, estate planning, real estate and torts. Early in his career he served as an assistant prosecutor and deputy judge in the Manchester Town Court. This public service was followed by a 20 year stint as the general counsel for the Manchester Public Housing Authority while privately practicing law. During the decades of the 50’s and 60’s, Attorney Yules developed the Ivy Manor and Rockledge apartment complexes in Manchester and residential sub-divisions in the Towns of Vernon and Bolton.
Early in his practice Attorney Herman Yules represented ice haulers who delivered blocks of ice by horse cart for the ice boxes of local residents. As a result of that representation, the firm developed a motor carrier transportation practice which continues today.
In the first half of the 1950s, Attorney Yules was counsel in one of Connecticut’s earliest defective product cases involving an automobile tire. See, Tralli v. Triple X Stores, Inc., 19 Conn. Sup. 293 (1954). As a result of that lawsuit, the firm developed an expertise in products liability litigation that continues.
The 1970s, 1980s and 1990s
Upon admission to the bar in 1978, Robert B. Yules, worked as a city attorney for the culturally diverse City of New Britain, Connecticut. As city attorney, he represented the City and its police, fire and civil service commissions in court during a state investigation of promotion rigging in the New Britain Police and Fire Departments by members of the City’s Civil Service Department.
After several years with New Britain’s Law Department, Mr. Yules worked for the next five years for two law firms in Hartford, Connecticut, trying products liability, construction defect and other civil cases for insurers and self-insureds. During this period Mr. Yules authored several widely cited journal articles on products liability. See, Yules, “An Analysis of Connecticut’s New Product Liability Law,” 56 Connecticut Bar Journal 269 (1982); Yules, “Defenses in a Connecticut Products Liability Case,” 57 Connecticut Bar Journal 441 (1982).
In 1984, Robert B. Yules joined Herman Yules in the practice of law with the formation of Yules & Yules, LLC, a boutique firm for the representation of clients in products liability, transportation, medical malpractice, insurance and workers’ compensation cases at 100 Constitution Plaza in Hartford. As assignments from insurers and manufacturers increased, Mr. Yules continued to publish products liability articles and to speak at seminars throughout the United States.
In the 1990s the firm’s practice was expanded to include the representation of medical device manufacturers and the defense of insurers in bad faith actions.
The Twenty-First Century
In January 2001 after 17 years at 100 Constitution Plaza in Hartford, Yules & Yules, relocated to 195 Church Street in New Haven, Connecticut, to better serve its growing litigation practice and established wealth management practice.