About
For two decades, Snyder has litigated some of New York’s most complex disputes — matters where strategy, timing, and institutional dynamics determine outcomes long before a court rules.
Our work integrates litigation strategy, corporate governance and finance, and forensic analysis. We engage selectively, operate nimbly, and focus on situations where our judgment and structure can make a decisive difference.
John H. Snyder
John H. Snyder is a trial lawyer and strategic advisor who begins by defining the resolution that must be achieved, then works backward to shape the conditions that make it unavoidable.
He approaches legal disputes as institutional systems — governed by incentives, timing, information flow, and human behavior — rather than as sequences of isolated arguments. Combined with elite first-chair trial skills, Snyder’s systems-level perspective brings coherence and direction to matters where conventional litigation has failed.
Snyder clerked for U.S. District Judge A. Richard Caputo, spent seven years at Proskauer Rose, and founded an independent Manhattan law practice. His work is informed by two decades of civil litigation, experience founding an artificial intelligence company, and sustained scholarship on civil procedure and institutional decision-making under conditions of data saturation.
In recent scholarship, Snyder argues that modern civil procedure faces an epistemic crisis: courts are increasingly unable to understand factual records at scale. He proposes FRCP 2.0, a framework for integrating computational assistance into discovery while preserving adversarial discipline and human accountability. It opens: “Litigation is a civilized society’s substitute for bloodshed.”
Admitted in New York and before the U.S. Supreme Court, the Second Circuit, SDNY, and EDNY.
Harvard Law School (J.D.), Brown University (A.B.)
Email: john@jhs.nyc
Thomas C. Sima
Tom Sima focuses on the corporate and structural dimensions of complex disputes — governance mechanics, capital structure, and transactional leverage that often determine outcomes before litigation resolves.
He handles international transactions involving complex transnational tax and corporate issues, working closely with litigation and forensic teams to align corporate decision-making with strategic pressure.
His work answers a simple question: What structural moves change the incentives?
Admitted in New York and Florida and before SDNY. Duke University School of Law (J.D., LL.M.)
Email: tom@tsima.com
Sydney Lanyon
Sydney Lanyon leads the firm’s forensic and investigative work.
She is responsible for factual reconstruction, financial modeling, and evidentiary analysis in matters where credibility, motive, and narrative coherence determine outcomes. Her work focuses on disputes involving personal misconduct, conflicting accounts, and incomplete or degraded records—situations in which precision and judgment matter more than volume.
Sydney has lived and worked overseas with NGOs and brings exceptional analytical rigor to the firm’s work. She collaborates closely with litigation and corporate counsel to ensure that strategy rests on a precise, disciplined understanding of the facts.
Email: sydney@jhs.nyc
Indivisible Tasks
Complex legal strategy is indivisible. It does not scale by headcount.
James Joyce took seven years to write Ulysses. Seven writers could not have done it in one.
In complex legal matters, strategy, structure, and facts are indivisible.
Treating them as separate workstreams creates friction, delay, and internal incoherence.
We operate as a small, integrated team of high-impact individuals — not a collection of specialists. Strategy, structure, and facts are developed together: continuously, iteratively, in real time.
That integration allows us to move faster, identify pressure points sooner, and avoid the inefficiencies and misalignments inherent in larger teams.
The approach outlined here reflects ongoing work on procedural design and responsibility in modern litigation.
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