Over the last two decades Michael LoFrumento has established himself as one of Long Island’s more productive and effective divorce lawyers. He’s practiced independently with small teams of attorneys his entire career, and in 2017 he and his partner Jeffrey Catterson merged their practice with commercial litigators. Today their firm, SCL Law Group, has multiple offices. It’s often said that family law demands the acuity and math skills of an accountant, the sensitivity of a therapist, and the day-to-day mental toughness of a professional athlete. If that’s true, then LoFrumento isn’t far from the total package. Peers say he today handles complex multi-million dollar cases, in no small part because of his strong background in accounting and finance.

Born in Lakewood, N.J., LoFrumento grew up in western Connecticut. When he wasn’t playing basketball or baseball, LoFrumento took an early interest in the law, beginning with nights watching LA Law and later reading To Kill a Mockingbird. By high school, he had an esoteric pastime: Listening to Supreme Court argument tapes called May It Please the Court, published by Law Professor Peter Irons. He even had a favorite court justice: Thurgood Marshall.

LoFrumento benefits from strong roots. His mother was a homemaker and his father was an accountant for Union Carbide, and played a key role in calculating the company’s liabilities in the Bhopal disaster. “Growing up and now into adulthood, my parents remain a constant source of support and a wellspring of advice.” Later, his father began his own accounting business where the younger LoFrumento got an early taste of finance. He went on to UMass and during the summers served as a counselor at Paul Newman’s The Hole in the Wall Gang Camp located in Ashford, Conn. “Mr. Newman and Ms. Woodward were amazing - their positivity and selflessness has had a huge impact on my life.” (LoFrumento remembers one of his last nights at The Hole in the Wall culminated with Paul Newman challenging him to a game of nine ball at the camp recreation hall. “He nearly cleared the table before I could even shoot.”) At UMass, his thesis focused on the “Framingham Eight,” the group of abused women convicted of murder for retaliating against abusive husbands. So when he went on to law school, and later clerked for Peter J. Galasso, LoFrumento knew then he’d make family law his career: “It is a practice where you help navigate people who are in crisis through one of the most traumatic events they will encounter in their life. That’s what led me to this field.”

While at Hofstra Law School, Professor Andrew Schepard, the director of Hofstra’s Center for Children and a national figure on custody and children’s issues was another influence. “His cerebral approach to advocacy and trailblazing attitude was infectious.” Right out of law school he was recruited by Peter J. Galasso and in 2008 he was named a partner.

Today LoFrumento’s 10-lawyer firm has a growing matrimonial practice spearheaded by Vincent Stempel, Jeffrey Catterson and LoFrumento; they are among the most active courtroom divorce lawyers in the region, which extends from Suffolk to Westchester, the five boroughs, and even as far north as Dutchess County. Their firm has offices in Garden City, Melville and in the Helmsley Building in Manhattan. LoFrumento and his wife Mary, a former New York City police officer and currently a health-care manager, have two children.