"If you sat across from your doctor and he told you that you needed a serious heart operation, the first thing going through your mind is that you need a second opinion," theorizes Pattison, "and that should be a valid practice in choosing real estate as well. This is particularly the case given the propensity of brokers to be optimistic about transactions where they get paid more."

"There has always been this inherent conflict in this business where someone is representing the tenant and getting paid from that same person only if a deal is signed," he continues. "Therefore, we have conceptualized what we are calling our second-opinion business where we, because of this conflict, provide major companies with a second opinion, as an outside, independent group that has no stake in the deal because we get a flat fee any which way."

In theory, the idea seems novel and useful, but some real estate executives doubt its merit. "If the tenant doesn't have confidence in his or her broker, then they shouldn't be using that individual," says Bradley Kaufman, a partner at Arent Fox Kintner Plotkin & Kahn. "If the whole issue was a real concern, brokers' commissions would have been on a flat-fee basis a long time ago."