Buckley, Mendleson, Criscione, and Quinn, P.C.

Focus and practice areas

Three areas carry most of the work here: workers' compensation, Social Security Disability, and personal injury. The firm serves clients in Albany and the wider Capital Region. Its personal injury docket covers auto accidents, motorcycle accidents, and slip and fall claims. Third-party liability matters tied to those injuries fall to the firm's litigation side.

The firm also takes wrongful death cases, product liability claims, and securities brokerage customer disputes. That mix keeps the firm close to two different systems. One is the administrative process that governs comp and disability, run through state and federal boards. The other is the civil courts, where injury and death claims are filed and tried.

For a client, that combination has a practical value. A worker hurt on the job may have both a comp claim and a separate injury claim against another party, and both can be handled in the same office. In my opinion that spread is the clearest thing the firm's pages tell you about how it wants to serve injured and disabled clients.

The workers' compensation focus

The firm says its attorneys hold more than 150 years of combined experience in workers' compensation. Two of its founders and principals built careers there: James E. Buckley and Brendan G. Quinn both work almost entirely on comp cases. That concentration shapes how the firm presents itself and how its intake is likely sorted.

How a comp case moves

These claims run through the New York Workers' Compensation Board. A worker files a claim, submits medical proof of the injury, and may appear at hearings before a workers' compensation law judge. Disputes over the degree of disability or the cause of an injury can stretch a case across many months. Steady attention to medical records and filing deadlines matters at each of those points.

A decision by a law judge is not always the last word. Either side can seek review by a panel of the Board, and further appeal can reach the state courts. A team that works comp cases every day knows the forms, the medical language, and the hearing schedule that shape those outcomes. That daily familiarity is the practical case for a comp-focused team.

Injured workers often keep dealing with the same claim for years, through changes in their medical condition and returns to work. Benefits can be reduced, suspended, or reopened as circumstances shift. Having one firm follow a comp file over that stretch keeps the history in one place, which helps when a later dispute turns on what happened early in the case.

How the team is built

The site names eight attorneys across principals, partners, of counsel, and two founders. Brendan G. Quinn is a principal and concentrates on workers' compensation. John J. Criscione is a partner whose work runs to personal injury and third-party litigation. Sunny Lee, Richard J. Frontero, and Karen R. Arndt are listed as attorneys. Lucinda H. Buckley holds an of counsel role, a title that usually marks a lawyer with a continuing tie to the firm and a defined role built on long experience.

Two names carry the firm's founding history. James E. Buckley is a founder who practices almost exclusively in workers' compensation. Ira Mendleson is a founder, now retired, whose career centered on Social Security disability. The Buckley name runs back to the firm's start, which links the current roster to its 1925 founding. The site does not publish law schools or admission years for the individual attorneys.

What the roster shows is a clear division of labor. Named lawyers are attached to the areas they actually run, and the two busiest fields, comp and injury, each have a principal or partner behind them. In my opinion that alignment is more useful to a prospective client than a long list of titles would be.

Social Security Disability claims

Disability work sits beside the firm's comp caseload, and the firm publishes both an SSDI claims process page and a set of SSDI FAQs. Ira Mendleson centered his career on this work before retiring, which points to a long presence in disability practice at the firm.

Steps in a disability claim

Social Security disability claims follow their own path. An applicant files with the Social Security Administration, and many first applications are denied. The next steps are a request for reconsideration and then a hearing before an administrative law judge, where medical evidence and testimony decide the result.

The agency uses a five-step test that asks whether a person is working, how severe the impairment is, and whether it prevents past or other work. Each step turns on documented proof, so the record a claimant builds early tends to shape the whole case. A firm that has handled these claims for years brings a working knowledge of what that record needs to contain.

If the judge denies the claim, review does not stop there. A claimant can ask the Appeals Council to look at the decision, and after that can file in federal district court. Few claimants reach that last stage, yet knowing the full route helps a lawyer set expectations at the start.

Injury, wrongful death, and investor claims

The personal injury side reaches past car crashes. The firm lists motorcycle accidents and slip and fall cases, and it takes wrongful death and product liability matters. John J. Criscione handles personal injury and the third-party litigation that often sits beside a comp claim, for instance when a worker is hurt by equipment or by a driver outside the employer's control.

New York shapes these injury claims in specific ways. Auto accident cases run first through no-fault insurance, which covers medical costs before a lawsuit for serious injury can proceed. Motorcycle riders sit outside much of that no-fault system, so their claims often move straight toward a liability case. Slip and fall matters turn on notice: whether the property owner knew or should have known about the hazard. A firm that takes all three needs to track those separate rules.

Product liability and wrongful death claims carry their own demands. A product case often turns on how an item was designed, made, or labeled, and it can call for engineering proof. A wrongful death claim is brought by the family or estate and asks a court to measure the loss a death caused. Both types reward early investigation while evidence and witnesses are still fresh.

Securities customer disputes

The securities brokerage customer claims are a less common line for a regional firm. These disputes usually go to arbitration through FINRA, the body that oversees brokers, and a panel decides them outside the courtroom. Having the option in-house gives Capital Region investors a local place to bring a claim against a brokerage.

The FINRA process has set steps. An investor who believes an account was mishandled files a claim, the parties choose arbitrators and exchange documents, and each side then presents proof at a hearing. The panel's award is usually binding, with narrow grounds to challenge it. Keeping intake, filing, and hearing with one team saves an investor from stitching the case together across offices.

Roots in the Capital Region

The firm traces its roots to 1925 and says it has represented Capital Region families across several generations. Its attorneys live in the local community, which keeps the firm tied to the area it serves. A history of that length gives the firm a long run of local matters in comp, disability, and injury law.

The Capital Region covers Albany and the surrounding counties, an area with state government offices, hospitals, and trade work that all carry injury and disability risk. A firm rooted there for generations has seen the local employers, insurers, and boards that these cases pass through. That accumulated local knowledge is hard to list on a page, yet it sits behind a long-running regional firm.

For someone weighing this firm, the useful facts are plain. It has a defined focus on workers' compensation and disability, a named roster with clear assignments, and roughly a century of presence in the Albany area. Those details come straight from the firm's own pages and can be checked against them. The firm builds its listing on named people and stated practice areas.