Legal Limelight, a weekly feature, includes a Q&A with one of our attorneys or valued employees. Keep reading to learn all about this week’s guest, Michael J. Colletta.
Q: How many years have you been with Tiveron Law?
A: I’ve been with Tiveron Law for five and a half years.
Q: What is your area of practice?
A: I practice Matrimonial and Family Law.
Q: Where did you attend school?
A: I received my Bachelor’s Degree in Social Studies Education from Ithaca College and I went to Brooklyn Law School for my law degree.
Q: Why did you become a lawyer?
A: I taught high school for a couple years after college. However, in order to continue teaching, I was at a point where I needed to go back to school to get a master’s degree. Law School had always been in the back of my mind, so instead of going back to school for a graduate degree in history or education, I decided to apply to law school.
Q: Why did you choose to practice in Buffalo?
A: My wife and I are both from Buffalo, so it was always our intention to wind up back here.
Q: What’s the one thing you want your clients to know about you?
A: I want my clients to know that I truly have their best interests at heart and every decision I make in the course of the representation is geared toward obtaining the best long-term, overall result possible. Even if a client doesn’t like or agree with the advice I’m giving them on a particular issue, they need to understand and trust that it’s for a purpose, even if the purpose is not immediately obvious to them. Trust is absolutely key in any attorney-client relationship.
Q: What is your favorite restaurant in Buffalo?
A: My wife and I have two small children, so our favorite child-friendly restaurant would be Pizza Plant and our favorite date-night restaurant is San Marco on Kensington.
Q: Where’s one place in the world you’d like to travel?
A: I love traveling; I’d really like to go to South America.
Q: Which is your favorite book?
A: My favorite book is a nonfiction work, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared M. Diamond.
Q: If you hadn’t become a lawyer, which profession would you have chosen?
A: I would have probably stuck with teaching, or when I was a child, I wanted to be an architect.