Steeg Law Firm, LLC

Focus and practice areas

Steeg Law works in real estate law from an office in New Orleans. The firm handles commercial and residential real estate, real estate financing, and title insurance. It also takes on commercial and business litigation.

Within commercial real estate, the firm names condominiums, development, zoning and land use, leases, purchase and sale, and property administration. Those are distinct bodies of law with distinct paperwork. A condominium conversion involves declarations and owner association documents. A zoning matter runs through municipal boards and public hearings.

The litigation side covers commercial and business disputes, bankruptcy litigation, real estate litigation, and title insurance litigation. Each of those connects back to the transactional work. A title dispute usually starts with a closing that happened years earlier.

The firm describes its geographic reach as Greater New Orleans and Louisiana, including Jefferson Parish and St. Tammany Parish. Louisiana runs a civil law system for property, which differs from the common law rules used in the other 49 states. Terms like usufruct and predial servitude have no direct equivalent elsewhere. In my opinion, a real estate practice built inside Louisiana is doing work that out of state counsel cannot easily replicate.

How the team is built

Seven attorneys appear on the firm's site. The roster has a managing partner, two partners, two senior associates, and two associates.

Robert M. Steeg is the Managing Partner. His practice covers commercial real estate, development, zoning and land use, leases, property administration, and real estate financing. That spread lines up closely with the firm's own list of commercial real estate services.

Randy Opotowsky is a Partner working in condominium law, development, zoning and land use, real estate financing, and residential real estate. Charles L. Stern, Jr. is the other Partner, and he handles commercial litigation, bankruptcy litigation, bet-the-company litigation, real estate litigation, and title insurance litigation. The two partners sit on opposite sides of the transaction and dispute divide.

Associates and senior associates

Lillian E. Eyrich is a Senior Associate and the one attorney with a full published biography. She has more than 35 years practicing as a title insurance attorney and has been with Steeg Law since 1999. She took a B.S. from the University of North Carolina in 1982 and a J.D. from Tulane Law School in 1985, and she was admitted to the Louisiana bar in 1985.

Eyrich coordinates title insurance for commercial and residential transactions. The site names hotels, office buildings, shopping centers, convenience store chains, and multi-state sales and loan closings among the property types she works on. Multi-state closings raise a coordination problem: each state has its own recording rules and its own form of title policy.

David A. Martinez is the other Senior Associate, working in title law and title insurance, purchase and sale, and real estate financing. Henry Opotowsky, an Associate, covers commercial and residential real estate, condominiums, development, leases, and estate planning. Andrew J. Stovall, also an Associate, handles commercial litigation, title insurance litigation, real estate litigation, and bankruptcy litigation.

The in-house title agency

Steeg Law runs Orleans Title Insurance Agency, L.L.C., its own title insurance agency. Orleans Title handles commercial and residential closings. The firm states that its title attorneys have more than 100 years of combined experience in title examination, underwriting and claims handling.

A title agency inside a law firm changes how a closing runs. In a typical deal the buyer's lawyer reviews the title commitment produced by a separate agency, then raises objections in writing. Where the same firm does both, the examination and the legal review happen under one roof.

Title examination in Louisiana means tracing the chain of ownership through parish conveyance and mortgage records. The examiner looks for gaps in the chain, unreleased mortgages, tax liens, judgments against prior owners, and servitudes granted to utilities or neighbours. Anything found goes on the commitment as an exception or gets cleared before the act of sale.

Underwriting is the decision about which of those exceptions the insurer will accept. Claims handling is what happens when a defect surfaces after the policy issues. Having all three functions in the same building gives a client one place to ask questions.

What the record shows

The firm was founded in 1972 by Moise S. Steeg, Jr., who brought together a group of lawyers in New Orleans. That gives the firm a documented history of more than fifty years in the same city. The current Managing Partner shares the founder's surname.

Steeg Law lists its legal name as Steeg Law Firm, LLC in the site footer, written as Steeg Law Firm, L.L.C. on the practice areas page. The main office is on St. Charles Avenue. The firm maintains a Facebook page alongside its website.

Each of the seven attorneys is listed with a title and a direct email address. As a reviewer, I treat that as a useful signal. A firm that publishes individual contact details for every lawyer on its roster is making itself easier to check.

How the published detail varies

Eyrich's page carries her degrees, her graduation years, and her bar admission year. The other six attorneys appear with their names, titles, and the areas they work in. Anyone comparing credentials across the roster will find that Louisiana bar records fill in admission dates and disciplinary history for all seven.

Who the work suits

The practice areas point toward property owners, developers, lenders, and businesses with real estate on the balance sheet. Condominium law and development work speak to people building or converting property. Leases and property administration speak to landlords holding it.

Real estate financing sits alongside the title work for a reason. A lender making a commercial loan requires a loan policy of title insurance before funding. The same examination supports both the owner's policy and the lender's.

The litigation group gives the firm somewhere to take a deal that goes wrong. Bankruptcy litigation matters here because a tenant or borrower filing for bankruptcy triggers an automatic stay, which halts eviction and foreclosure until the court lifts it. Real estate creditors then argue their position in bankruptcy court rather than state court.

Steeg Law has kept a single New Orleans office since 1972 and a practice centred on Louisiana property.