What are the responsibilities and job description for the Associate Attorney – Insurance Coverage, Construction & Real Estate Litigation position at Finch & Hammer LLP?
Finch & Hammer LLP | Beverly Hills, CA | In-Office | Compensation Commensurate with Experience
Finch & Hammer is a boutique litigation firm at the intersection of construction defect law, insurance coverage, and real estate — and we're building something different. We're not a legacy firm with billable-hour treadmills. We're lawyers with deep real estate operational knowledge trying to build a scalable law firm focused on construction insurance coverage and recovery for property owners.
Our founding partner, Dr. Alan Tzvika Nissel, brings over 25 years of real estate and risk management practice and serves as a law professor at Pepperdine Caruso School of Law. Our partners include a former managing director of real estate development and construction at Jamison Properties with over $1 billion in ground-up project experience, and of-counsel counsel with over 30 years in professional liability, E&O, and insurance coverage disputes. We are based in Beverly Hills, with offices in New York, and we serve clients nationwide.
From early in your tenure, you will have substantive involvement across:
Pre-Loss Advisory
- Policy analysis and coverage mapping before claims arise
- Contract review for risk allocation and mitigation across construction agreements and development deals
- Client counseling on construction risk, insurance program structuring, and dispute avoidance
Post-Loss Claims Recovery & Litigation
- Coverage analysis, reservation of rights review, and MOST IMPORTANTLY bad faith claims
- Drafting coverage opinions, demand letters, and claim presentations
- All phases of litigation: pleadings, motions, discovery, depositions, and trial preparation
- Construction defect disputes, including coordination with forensic engineers and industry experts
- Real estate litigation involving ownership, development, and contractual disputes
Credentials matter less to us than character. We will take a hungry, fundamentally responsible, intellectually curious, collaborative attorney with 1 year of experience over a credentialed candidate with "bad" (legacy law firm) habits any day of the week.
Baseline requirements:
- J.D. from an accredited law school or its equivalent
- Active California Bar admission
- 0–3 years of litigation experience (insurance coverage, construction, real estate)
- Competitive compensation commensurate with experience
- Intimate mentorship — you will work directly alongside the founding partner, a practicing law professor with decades of real estate and litigation experience.
- Startup culture — we are a scaling firm with serious legal work and a collaborative, can-do environment where your contributions are visible and valued
- No origination pressure — focus on excellent legal work, full stop
- Beverly Hills in-office environment — we work together, in person
Send your resume and a brief cover letter telling us why you want to be here: jobs@finchhammer.com
Finch & Hammer LLP is an equal opportunity employer.