Practice Areas

We provide counsel to community banks, lenders, borrowers, and other financial institutions on commercial lending and finance matters. With experience on both sides of the transaction, we deliver practical, business-minded guidance.

Representative work includes:

• Commercial and agricultural loan documentation
• Secured transactions and UCC matters
• Loan workouts, modifications, and restructuring
• Letters of credit, guaranties, and loan participations
• Counsel to community banks on regulatory and transactional questions
• Real estate finance and construction loans

Closely held businesses and family enterprises require thoughtful structuring at every stage — from initial formation through growth, succession, and sale. We serve as outside general counsel to a range of business clients, addressing legal questions as they arise and helping owners plan for the future.

Our corporate practice includes:

• Formation — selection and formation of corporations, LLCs, partnerships, and other entities, with attention to liability, tax, and operational considerations.
• Structuring — operating agreements, shareholder agreements, capital structure, governance documents, and the agreements that define how an enterprise operates.
• Succession Planning — buy-sell agreements, ownership transitions, family business succession, and the integration of business succession with personal estate planning.

A well-crafted estate plan protects your family, your assets, and your wishes. We work with clients at every stage of life — from young families putting first plans in place to multigenerational families addressing succession of significant wealth — to design plans that fit their circumstances and goals.

Our estate planning and administration practice includes:

• Simple Planning — wills, powers of attorney for property and healthcare, living wills, and revocable trusts for individuals and families who need straightforward, well-prepared documents.
• Complex Trusts and Asset Preservation Planning — irrevocable trusts, dynasty trusts, special needs planning, and strategies designed to preserve assets across generations or in the face of long-term care concerns.
• Estate Tax Planning — counsel on federal and Illinois estate, gift, and generation-skipping transfer tax matters, including planning techniques to minimize transfer taxes for families with potential exposure.
• Probate — representation of executors, administrators, and heirs through the Illinois probate process, including supervised and independent administration.
• Trust Administration — guidance for successor trustees on their fiduciary duties, beneficiary communications, asset transfers, accounting, and tax compliance following a settlor's death or incapacity.

We represent buyers, sellers, lenders, borrowers, landlords, and tenants in a wide range of real estate matters throughout Illinois. From the closing of a family home to the financing and development of commercial property, our practice covers the legal questions that arise around real property.

Services include:

• Residential and commercial purchase and sale transactions
• Title review, title clearance, and title insurance matters
• Commercial and agricultural leases
• Real estate financing and closings
• Easements, boundary, and land use questions
• Like-kind exchanges and real estate aspects of estate and business planning

Tax considerations touch nearly every legal matter we handle — the structure of a new business, the treatment of a real estate transaction, the design of an estate plan. We provide tax counsel both as a standalone practice and as an integrated part of our broader work, and our admission to the United States Tax Court allows us to represent clients in federal tax controversies as well as in planning.

Our tax practice includes:

• Federal and Illinois tax planning for individuals, businesses, and trusts
• Entity-level and owner-level tax counsel for closely held companies
• Tax-aware structuring of business transactions, distributions, and reorganizations
• Federal tax controversy and representation before the United States Tax Court
• Tax aspects of estate, gift, and succession planning
• Coordination with accountants and other advisors on complex tax questions