Ellen B. Friedler

Founding Partner/Managing Partner

Ellen B. Friedler concentrates her practice on commercial leasing transactions and related property management matters. For more than 30 years, she has focused on retail and office leasing and related matters, representing landlords and tenants. Ellen has extensive experience representing landlords with national lease portfolios, national retail tenants and office tenants. She has worked on major leasing transactions involving regional shopping centers, life-style centers, office buildings and mixed-use properties.

Ellen has developed significant relationships within the commercial leasing community on both the legal and business sides. These relationships allow her to assist her clients in establishing and maintaining positive landlord/tenant relationships throughout the leasing process and beyond. Ellen has also developed an extensive catalog of leasing forms and language that permits the commercial leasing group to streamline the lease negotiation and drafting process. She is also a contributing author to a lease negotiation handbook and has been a frequent speaker at retail industry events, including ICSC and PLI.

Prior to founding Strategic Leasing Law Group, Ellen was a Partner at Neal Gerber Eisenberg and the chair of the commercial leasing practice group, where she focused on commercial leasing transactions, as well as assembling and training a group of highly experienced legal professionals in the commercial leasing specialty. Ellen was also a Vice President and member of the Board of Directors of Rosenberg & Liebentritt, P.C., where she was the head of the firm’s retail leasing and telecommunications practices. Rosenberg & Liebentritt served as in-house lawyers for Sam Zell and various enterprises in which Mr. Zell had an interest. Prior to joining Rosenberg in 1990, she worked at Metropolitan Structures, a national office building developer, where she was a co-head of the office leasing group. Before Metropolitan Structures, she worked at Mayer, Brown & Platt, where she had a general commercial real estate practice.

Ellen is AV Peer Review Rated by the Martindale-Hubbell Peer Review Ratings in both legal ability and ethical standards. She has also been selected by her peers for inclusion in The Best Lawyers in America in Real Estate Law and was named as a 2017 Woman of Influence.

Education: Harvard Law School (J.D., 1983), University of Wisconsin – Madison (B.A., 1980)

Bar Admissions: Illinois, 1983.