The Firm's business department includes an extensive general corporate practice with activities ranging from routine matters such as contracts, financing, banking, formations, dissolutions and tax to complex business transactions such as mergers and acquisitions, corporate reorganizations and directors' and officers' responsibilities and liabilities.

Personal service and attention to individual, business and family circumstances are hallmarks of private client practice. Members of the group counsel and represent clients throughout the United States, both individuals and businesses. Our lawyers have served the trusts and estates and related needs of a large number of distinguished families for many years, assisting and advising them in perpetuation of their personal wealth and investments for later generations.

Private Client lawyers engage in sophisticated personal estate and tax planning, probate and trust administration, business succession planning and related legal services for family and individual clients, including:

• Estate planning;
• Will and trust preparation;
• Special needs trusts;
• Durable Powers of Attorney;
• Advance Health Care Directives;
• Closely-held business practice;
• Estate, gift, generation-skipping and income tax advice;
• Life insurance advanced underwriting advice;
• Charitable foundations and trusts;
• Will, estate and trust litigation;
• Marital agreements;
• Business continuation planning;
• Generation-skipping and dynasty trust tax planning;
• Estate and trust administration;
• Irrevocable insurance trusts;
• Retirement benefit planning;
• Guardianships/conservatorships; and
• Medicaid/Medicare planning.

Frequent changes in federal tax and state probate and trust laws challenge lawyers to maintain skills that are current and forward-looking and require a depth and breadth of legal knowledge that a large practice group offers in the servicing of client needs. In addition, these lawyers draw on others in the firm with experience in tax, labor, international, securities, general corporate, litigation and other practice areas and work closely with outside accounting, insurance, investment, banking and trust professionals in meeting special client needs.