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Top Real Estate Attorneys - Best of Newburyport Real Estate Lawyers

Liberty Law & Title – A Boutique Law Firm

Searching for a top shelf real estate attorney?  Liberty Law is a Newburyport, Massachusetts concierge, boutique law firm with an experienced team of real estate lawyers concentrating in all aspects of Residential & Commercial Real Estate, Business, Venture Capital, Product / Invention Development and Licensing as well as private equity and strategy. The goal of the Firm is to manage these often competing business and legal areas professionally and in a manner which produces the most successful legal and business result for our clients in all areas of: Residential & Commercial Real Estate LawCondo Conversions, Business Law Start-Up, Product / Invention Development & Licensing, Mergers & Acquisitions, Private Equity & Strategy.

Liberty Law real estate lawyers are based out of Newburyport, Boston and Portsmouth and proudly represent major lending institutions and banks across New England and beyond as well as start-up companies and ventures, real estate development firms, manufacturing ventures, environmental engineering firms, closely held corporations and government agencies.  In addition, the Law Firm represents lenders, buyers and sellers of real estate in a variety of property matters from residential and commercial transactions and loans, to venture capital, business financing & funding, corporate concerns as well as inventors and product developers – including clients who, with our assistance from inception, have successfully licensed their product inventions into the mass-market retail channels such as Wal-Mart, K-Mart, Toys R Us, CVS, Bed Bath Beyond, Target and other retailers both domestically, and markets abroad.  Through a professional and innovative approach to providing highly expert and competitive legal services, Liberty Law has earned the loyalty and confidence of our various and diverse client base.

Whether searching for a real estate attorney or simply the answer to a real estate question, Liberty Law, a sophisticated boutique law firm draws upon the knowledge of these varying areas of real estate law in an ever changing legal and regulatory environment, while plying our experience in complex negotiations for the advancement and protection our clients’ best interests.

Liberty Law is a Newburyport based Law Firm with offices located in both the Seaport District of Boston, as well as a new office in Portsmouth, NH.  Liberty law proudly represents its diverse and innovative clients in all facets of Residential & Commercial Real Estate Conveyancing, Zoning, Land Use and Permit Applications before local/state boards, Condo Conversions, entrepreneurship and business / deal strategy. As coastal real estate and legal experts, the attorneys at Liberty work with and assemble only the most qualified talent, engineers and other professionals so as to ensure that its clients enjoy the very best level of team talent available  – all with a focus toward bringing a clients’ deal, transaction, project or matter to a creative, driven and successful resolution.

Founding real estate attorneys Robert Ciampitti, Jr. and Charles S. Palmisano, along with Partner Mike B. McCarthy frequently author and lecturer on a variety of topics in residential & commercial real estate, business, zoning and environmental law and have each co-authored or contributed to Massachusetts Continuing Legal Education publications.  Attorney Rob Ciampitti has also published in the nationally-circulated Environmental Law Journal on the topics of toxicology and expert testimony in proving environmental damages – and was a former Visiting Professor of Business Law at Salem State University, Salem, Massachusetts.  Mr. Ciampitti has also served on the Newburyport Zoning Board of Appeals for over 18 years and is currently the Board’s Chairman.

Liberty Law

By Robert Ciampitti , Newburyport.Com Correspondent
Rob Ciampitti is a co-founding attorney and partner at Liberty Law and represents a dynamic client base of lenders, investors, developers as well as buyers & sellers of real estate – across a variety of land use, zoning, and condo matters ranging from commercial & residential real estate to private financing, development and permitting and innovative deal-strategy. In October of 2020, Rob was admitted to Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, where he will be completing Harvard’s Advanced Real Estate Management and Development graduate program. An active licensed pilot since 1989, Rob Ciampitti holds a Private Pilot’s License with an Instrument Rating and shares his passion for aviation with his wife and two teenage sons, Rob also enjoys scouting with his two sons and serves as a Scout Leader and Merit Badge counselor for Scout Troop 21 (Newburyport, MA) and is himself an Eagle Scout – recently joined in that honor by both of his sons. Rob Ciampitti was admitted to the Bar of the United States Supreme Court in 2011 and remains an active member in good standing and has held a City of Newburyport Mayoral appointment to the Newburyport Zoning Board of Appeals since 2002 – where he currently serves as the Board’s Chairman.

What’s Up With That Wooden Wheel at Liberty Law

Wooden Wheel, Hoist Wheel, Newburyport Liberty Law

If you have ever been to a real estate closing at  Liberty Law, you may have noticed a huge wooden wheel on the 3rd floor (hand-notched with evenly-spaced square holes – each carefully chiseled along the entire outside circumference of the wheel itself).  You may have also noticed the large ship-mast-like wooden spindle that spans enormous roof timbers all square-carved & fitted into the center hub of that wheel.  If so, then you may have asked yourself (or one of us), “What’s up with that wheel?”

The answer is interesting, though not unique in and around the old buildings of 19th Century Newburyport.  The history of this wheel – and surviving building elements like it around our City – is tethered back over nearly 200 years to Newburyport’s rich clipper ship & maritime heyday.   This wheel was called simply, a hoist-wheel and in the mid to late 1800(s), during the height of Newburyport’s global sailing trade, our 3 story building was used as a retail provisions shop.  Offered for sale inside were goods and wares ranging from the ordinary to the rarified – all arriving along our waterfront aboard locally built Clipper ships (things which today can be delivered by a drone right to your doorstep by 11AM tomorrow ….. but ONLY if you’re a Prime Member). 

If you could travel back in time and see this hoist wheel in say 1830 or so, you would have noticed that each of those notched holes supported a single wishbone shaped iron fork.  These iron forks keep a 2 story knotted rope-loop (a rope chain of sorts) threaded on the wheel itself.  Down below, you would have seen an operator pulling one end of that rope loop hand-over-hand on, which in turn would have spun booth the wheel and wooden spindle above.  Of course, as the spindle turned, it would have pulled another rope to create a manual elevator – lifting heavy goods and cargo to the upper floors.  Even today nearly 250 years later, that wheel still seems to spin with ease.

It was widely rumored during this era that some of this cargo, having survived a voyage from the Far East, West Indies or Europe all the way to our waterfront docks, somehow “got lost” along the final 100 feet of its journey to the Newburyport Customs House.  By whatever unrecorded means these goods finally made their way into the city’s commercial interior, we must count ourselves truly lucky today to be among the current stewards of these architectural treasures of our Clipper City’s maritime past.  These very ordinary yet amazing relics of our maritime past remind us of just how incredible it is to have the privilege to live and work under this rare canopy of such “living history.”

The next time you’re on Liberty Street whether for a real estate closing or “just because,” I invite you to come visit us here at Liberty Law – and check out this hoist wheel for yourself (with its 250 year old hand cut iron nails and notched holes).  By celebrating even the “ordinary” of our past, we help these wonderful treasures stay relevant in our present…and hopefully preserved and protected for our collective future.

Rob Ciampitti is a local history buff and the Co-Founder of Liberty Law located at 11A Liberty Street. Rob is also the Chairman of the Newburyport Zoning Board of Appeals, having proudly served on the Newburyport ZBA for nearly 20 years.

Wooden Wheel, hoist wheel, Liberty Law Newburyport

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