De Niro Divorce Attorney Leaves Blank Rome to Launch Boutique

When Caroline Krauss decided to leave Blank Rome after 24 years to launch her own boutique, she called one of her clients, actor Robert De Niro, to let him know her plans.

“I said, ‘This is what I’m doing, would you like to come with me?’ and he said, ‘Of course,’” recalled Krauss, who has co-chaired Blank Rome’s matrimonial and family law practice for the last seven years.

With words of approval from a world famous actor and the commitment of a group of current and former Blank Rome lawyers Krauss on Nov.18 launched Krauss Shaknes Tallentire & Messeri.

The new firm, with a Manhattan office in the Empire State Building and a second office in Greenwich, Conn., will offer advice on all aspects of family law. Clients will include De Niro and other celebrities and high-net worth individuals.

Idea to Reality

Fellow Blank Rome partner Heidi Tallentire has joined Krauss as well as McLaughlin & Stern partners Valentina Shaknes and Jordan Messeri.

The idea for the boutique came to Krauss and Shaknes over lunch in June 2019.

The pair has known each other for years. Krauss hired Shaknes as a paralegal at Blank Rome 17 years ago. Shaknes became a Blank Rome associate in 2007 and worked at the firm until 2010. After brief stints at two New York family law firms, she joined McLaughlin & Stern in 2015, eventually becoming the co-chair of its matrimonial practice.

“We were having lunch in June and were talking about what could do together,” Krauss recalled. “She just looked at me and said, ‘Do you want to go out on our own?’ and I said, ‘Yes, yes I do.”

Krauss works with clients throughout New York on family law matters, including divorce, child support, and custody.

She first joined Blank Rome in 2000 through its merger with 80-lawyer New York law firm Tenzer Greenblatt. As co-chair she oversaw 30 lawyers in Blank Rome’s family and matrimonial practice across five offices. The firm’s family and matrimonial group has blossomed into one of the largest such practices in the country.

In 2016 she represented a plaintiff pro bono in a same-sex parenting and custody case that redefined “parent” under New York law, overturning 25 years of state legal precedent.

She also has represented several high net-worth and celebrity clients, including De Niro in his recent divorce from estranged wife of 20 years, Grace Hightower.

Every client Krauss had at Blank Rome has followed her to her new firm, she said.

‘All Aligned’

At her new home at KSTM, Krauss has reunited with several of her current and former Blank Rome colleagues to build something new.

“When you’re doing this, you need to do this with people who you know well, who you trust, whose values are aligned with yours, whose work ethic is aligned with yours,” Krauss said. “There’s a lot that has to be right to make this work and it seemed to me that we were all aligned in every way.”

Tallentire, who specializes in working with high-net-worth individuals in the hedge fund, private equity and venture capital space, first joined Blank Rome in 2005 as an associate and made partner in 2015. Messeri, who has a background in project management and business, also got his start at as an associate at Blank Rome.

Shaknes and Messeri have collaborated before, achieving a notable victory in New York federal court in 2017 under the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction on behalf of a mother who refused to return her child to an abusive father outside the country.

“We’re big firm lawyers who have decided to leave our big firms behind and stretch out and do something different and new,” Krauss said.

In addition to its four named partners, the firm has already added an associate from McLaughlin & Stern and is poised to bring on another. Between now and March, Krauss said the firm anticipates bringing on at least two more lawyers as associates or of counsel.

Though it might be a risk to start a new boutique, Krauss said she’s ready and willing to do so beside people she’s worked with and trusts.

“If I was going to do this it was going to be mine, and mine with people [alongside whom] I wanted to spend the rest of my practicing years.”