Janis Schiff, Holland & Knight
DC has the best lawyers in the country (we're not biased at all). To highlight some of the city's best commercial real estate attorneys, we applied extensive use of statistics and the scientific method and bring you our latest installment of the legal minds that help DC's real estate industry thrive. (Check out Part 1 and Part 2.)
Janis is a retail guru, currently working on major projects including 10-acre CityCenter (retail development and leasing for Hines and Qatari Diar) and the $1.5B public-private partnership The Wharf (just started leasing work). There's also the acquisition of 10 shopping centers nationally for an Israeli fund, City Market at O, and a just-finished deal with Cafritz to put a health club at Ft. Totten. The key is to not just know the law, but to know the business, she tells us. It's important to see how tenants operate (so she does a lot of site visits). Her father was a real estate appraiser and she did title work for him in high school--but her son is following in her footsteps as a lawyer, now in law school at UMiami. Off work, you'll find her sailing the Chesapeake in the Schiff Ahoy IV, or taking a bike trip like this 100-miler with husband Phil across Sonoma and Napa Valleys.
