Departments: Private Client Group

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For more than a century, Ropes & Gray has been helping individuals and families adapt to changing personal, financial and business needs. For many families, the firm is now advising our third or fourth generation. At the same time, we represent many entrepreneurs and others with newly created wealth. Second marriages, adoptions and non-nuclear families have complicated the family dynamic at the same time new tax laws and emerging business models have transformed how wealth is created. To help you understand our practice, we present below the answers to frequently asked questions.

FAQs
What do we do?
How are we organized?
How are work assignments distributed?
Do associates have an opportunity to work with different partners?
How much partner contact and client contact will I have as a first-year associate?
What is the range of projects I can expect in my first year?
What sort of formal training will I get to supplement the courses I took in law school?
What have we done lately?

What do we do?
Our work encompasses three principal areas. First, we help clients to plan for the transfer of their wealth during lifetime and on death. This involves traditional estate planning, such as wills and trusts, as well as financial planning and philanthropic advice. Second, we help family members and fiduciaries to settle estates, navigating them through a myriad of probate and tax requirements. Third, our partners act as trustees for over 2400 trusts, providing investment advice and other fiduciary advice to trust beneficiaries. Our work requires a thorough knowledge of estate, gift and income tax and often involves questions concerning real estate, art, and closely held companies.

How are we organized?
Martin Hall is the head of the Private Client Group. There are 12 partners, 1 counsel, and 12 associates. In addition, we have nearly 40 support professionals, including tax accountants, financial planners, philanthropic advisors, trust administrators and estate settlement administrators who help us every day.

How are work assignments distributed?
When a partner has a project that is expected to take three hours or longer to complete, he or she sends an e-mail describing the project to a special assignments "mailbox". Each week, a committee of three partners (currently Martin Hall, Marc Bloostein, and Brenda Diana) meets to review the new projects in the mailbox and assign them based on the complexity of the project and the associate's experience and workload. The committee strives to give each associate a chance to work on a variety of projects that are appropriate for the associate's level of experience and that will help the associate continue to develop. The committee also keeps track of the workflow of all the associates to make sure assignments are spread fairly among them. Partners may assign projects expected to take less than three hours directly to associates without going through the formal assignments process.

Do associates have an opportunity to work with different partners?
Absolutely. Associates typically work for each of the partners in the Private Client Group at some point during their first year. There is no policy of assigning associates to particular partners. We believe it is important for associates to work with and learn from many different partners because it helps associates develop their own distinct approach to being a lawyer.

How much partner contact and client contact will I have as a first-year associate?
A lot of both. Associates work directly with partners on nearly all their projects. Only occasionally will a junior associate work on a project with a senior associate. You can expect to interact with partners on a daily basis in the Private Client Group. You can also expect to have client contact from the very first days of your career in the Private Client Group. You will meet with clients and talk with them on the phone regularly.

Associate Cameron Casey (Harvard Law School '03), right, and partner Brenda Diana often work closely together on projects.

What is the range of projects I can expect in my first year?
You can expect to draft wills, trusts, health care proxies and powers of attorney, along with summaries explaining these documents to clients in "plain English". You might also be asked to prepare other documents like prenuptial agreements and family limited partnerships. You can expect to help settle estates by filing wills with the probate court and gathering information for estate tax returns. You can expect to do legal research, including research on tax issues. To give students an idea of the types of projects that they might encounter in their first year, we have listed below a sample of the projects that an associate in the Private Client Group worked on during her first year at Ropes & Gray.

Cameron Casey graduated from Harvard Law School in 2003 and began work in Ropes & Gray's Boston office in September 2003. For a description of the projects she worked on in her first year, click here.

What sort of formal training will I get to supplement the courses I took in law school?
Our group of lawyers is small and tight-knit, leading to close mentoring relationships between partners and associates that provide what we believe is the best training available. The informal training that comes from working closely with partners and clients is supplemented by more formal training of various kinds. For example, there is a monthly "legal" meeting of all lawyers in the department at which new developments and topics of general interest are discussed. In addition, all associates get together weekly and meet with Marc Bloostein, who is the partner in charge of training in the Private Client Group. The group learns more about estate planning and estate settlement, using examples from current client matters to teach associates the tax and legal concepts central to our practice. The group also studies our standard estate planning documents in detail, learning the legal and practical reasons behind nearly every clause. Continuing legal education seminars offered by local and national bar associations are another way that our associates receive valuable training. Our associates also participate in the firmwide training program for new associates.

What have we done lately?
The following examples in which Private Client Group associates played leading roles illustrate not only the breadth of the group's practice, but also the extraordinary opportunity that the group's associates have to participate in that practice in a meaningful way.

Prepared an estate plan and gifting program for a young scientist with a start-up biotech company to build wealth in the next generation.
Worked with principals in private equity firms to transfer carried interest in private equity funds to family trusts.
Oversaw the settlement of the estate of the owner of a public relations firm, working closely with his widow and our corporate and tax departments to sell a stake in the company.
Advised universities and hospitals about charitable trusts and other forms of charitable giving.
Assisted a donor in making several planned gifts to a hospital to support the construction of a new treatment facility.
Helped prepare and negotiate a prenuptial agreement for a young client interested in protecting her inheritance from claims in case of a divorce.
Advised mutual fund companies on the formation and ongoing administration of College Savings Plans under section 529 of the tax code.
Helped a young mother through the legal process of adopting her own out-of-wedlock baby so the child would be eligible to inherit from large family trusts.
Helped a client negotiate the terms for loaning a valuable antique desk to a major art museum.
Prepared an estate plan through which a client will transfer a multi-million dollar art collection to several museums at her death.
Assisted partners in their roles as trustees for numerous trusts managed by our Trust Investment Committee and served as trustee of some smaller trusts.
Successfully coordinated a settlement among 14 claimants to a contested 85-year-old trust that was terminating.
Contributed to the community by working as the Lawyer for a Day at the Suffolk County Probate Court and in that capacity:
- Helped several women in their efforts to collect child support payments that were in arrears.
- Helped an aunt in becoming the guardian of a young niece who had been abandoned by her parents.
- Helped a 15-year-old from a troubled home request that her guardianship be transferred to a family friend.

Shira Sokal (Harvard Law School '04) and Geoff Mason (New York University School of Law '05) both chose to focus on the Private Client Group's trusts and estates practice. Like most of their fellow associates, Shira and Geoff both participated in the firm's Summer Program. Since joining Ropes & Gray Shira and Geoff have each drafted a variety of wills, trusts, and family limited partnership agreements; participated in settling estates; and worked on matters concerning tax-exempt organizations.