McDermott Will & Schulte, a global law firm

From our offices in key financial centers across the United States and in Europe, we provide comprehensive advice on a wide range of issues facing high-net-worth multinational individuals and families, multi-generational families, large closely and privately held businesses, foundations, estates, trusts, private trust companies, corporate trustees, and special purpose investment management entities. We assist clients with complex, cross-border legal and taxation needs where they live, work, invest and travel, and on all types of transactions, from purchasing a home in South Africa to selling a startup business in Silicon Valley.

Our private client practice is consistently recognized by Chambers High Net Worth as a strong market leader in private wealth law. In addition, the International Academy of Estate and Trust Law has more members from our firm than from any other firm in the world, and one of our partners has served as president of the organization.

Our practice is global, representing clients with interests and family members in Africa, Asia, Australia, China, Europe, South America and the United States. We advise clients on the international dimensions of wealth transfer and corporate succession planning, private foundations and charitable organizations, family office and private trust company formation and operation, international tax planning, cross-border estate planning, life insurance and leveraged asset planning, and representation of executors, trustees and other fiduciaries.

As a leading firm in the areas of taxation, wealth transfer, and estate and business planning, we offer clients unparalleled, wide-ranging legal resources, including access to the services of the firm's lawyers in dozens of practice areas. As seasoned individual practitioners, we provide creative, customized representation for clients’ most important and sensitive needs. We serve as clients’ personal general counsel, crafting solutions that protect what matters most to internationally based multinational families, trusts, and privately held businesses.

Managing substantial personal, family, and business wealth requires careful coordination across family dynamics, governance considerations, competing interests, and evolving legal and regulatory frameworks. Our lawyers help you navigate that complexity so you can preserve and grow your wealth and protect your legacy across generations.

Our private client lawyers advise individuals, families, and family offices across the full spectrum of private wealth matters. From tax planning to succession, we help you structure and manage wealth in alignment with your long-term goals. Our lawyers represent key stakeholders, including:

• Entrepreneurs, executives, and investment principals
• Closely held and family-controlled enterprises
• Multigenerational families and family offices
• Fiduciaries and private trust companies
• Philanthropic and charitable organizations

We advise on wealth structures that span borders, asset classes, and generations. Our private client lawyers coordinate across the firm’s global tax, corporate, real estate, litigation, and regulatory practices to deliver integrated, cross-border guidance. We also incorporate your philanthropic priorities into your broader strategy to support the legacy you want to build.

Our lawyers help you manage diverse assets, including closely held and international businesses, real estate holdings, marketable and private investments, digital assets, intellectual property, and other complex holdings. When business ownership and personal wealth are closely linked, we align business strategy with long-term wealth planning and succession goals.

For sophisticated wealth structures, tax planning is critical to preserving value. We develop domestic and international tax strategies designed to minimize tax exposure and facilitate efficient wealth transfer. We also help you navigate evolving regulations, cross-border obligations, and complex financial structures to support compliance and reduce operational disruption.

When disputes arise, we guide you through sensitive family, business, fiduciary, and regulatory matters with discretion. We pursue resolutions that de-escalate conflict through negotiation and mediation, while remaining prepared to defend your interests in court when necessary.

Our private client practice supports you through every stage of wealth creation, growth, and transition. We develop strategies informed by the interconnected nature of business interests and family dynamics. Our lawyers help you preserve your wealth, support continuity, and protect your legacy over the long term.

Family offices are unique and complex, and so is the way they invest. We serve wealthy families and family offices in creating tax and legal structures to optimize the investment of family capital in both public and private markets across all asset classes.

Our elite multi-practice team draws on the experience of our tax, private client and transactional lawyers to provide creative and holistic solutions at each of the three levels of a family wealth structure: individuals, trusts and private foundations; family offices and investment vehicles; and underlying investments including operating companies, private investment funds, private credit and other direct deals.

Top Level: Individuals, Trusts and Private Foundations

Thoughtful investment structures begin with creating tax and estate planning structures that help you optimize the ultimate beneficial ownership and succession of wealth. We take into account state, federal and international income tax efficiency; transfer tax efficiency; and your family’s charitable goals and objectives in designing and implementing trust structures, including the use of private trust companies, generation-skipping transfer (GST)-exempt trusts, Grantor Retained Annuity Trusts (GRATs) and a variety of charitable trusts and private foundations.

Second Level: Family Office and Investment Vehicles

The second critical element of our work on your behalf involves structuring the family office and family investment entities for maximum income tax and operational efficiency, often through profits interest planning (for both family offices and key employees). We also help family offices navigate various regulatory frameworks, such as securities law and the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA). Our skilled team creatively structures family offices and closely held investment entities to craft simple outcomes around complex tax and investment objectives.

Lower Level: Underlying Investments

The third element of efficient investing is optimizing the underlying investment or asset itself and then executing the deal from start to finish. We leverage our vast experience in tax, private equity M&A, real estate, finance, executive compensation/benefits and other areas to ensure that the structure of the target investment seamlessly integrates into a holistic structure.

By taking this comprehensive, multi-level approach, we aim to achieve “tax alpha” for your family, creating incremental investment returns that would otherwise be lost when working with external advisors with a narrower lens.

Tapping decades of experience, an international footprint and a cross-practice platform, our team is ideally equipped to handle your most complex transactional needs, including family office formation, fund investments, credit transactions, FinTech investments, buying and selling professional sports teams, a variety of real estate matters, blockchain investments (both coins and direct investments) and other direct investing.

We take a 360-degree view of each investment, considering every aspect from an entity, family office, trust/beneficiary perspective. Based on our decades of experience in this space, our private client lawyers are deal- and income tax-savvy, just as our tax and transactional lawyers serving our high-net-worth clients have a deep understanding of trusts and estates. It is this multi-faceted lens that defines our market-leading family office practice and equips us to best serve your family’s interests.

For more than a quarter of a century, the firm’s private client disputes team has been a full-time, full-service group of lawyers, representing fiduciaries and other parties involved in will contests, trust contests, will and trust construction and reformation suits, and other fiduciary litigation.

There is no substitute for experience, whether defending a fiduciary charged with personal exposure for handling an estate, trust or guardianship, representing a plaintiff in a will or trust contest, or navigating a fiduciary or non-fiduciary party through the pitfalls of guardianship or charitable and exempt organization litigation. From having handled hundreds of cases, we have a keen understanding of the critical issues involving the defense of executors and trustees as well as representing plaintiffs in will and trust contests and parties in guardianship controversy, including many complicated will and trust construction suits, charitable and exempt-entity qualification problems, and estate and fiduciary tax-related litigation.

We regularly develop and apply creative solutions that can help deliver timely, client-favorable resolutions to a dispute. Drawing on the resources of one of the world’s top-tier private client practice groups and a strong bench of first-chair lawyers in the firm’s litigation department, our team achieves consistently strong results for clients on cases involving wills, trusts and guardianships, as well as in charitable and exempt-organization litigation. Our dedicated litigators apply deep understanding of oftentimes complex and multifaceted legal issues to develop strong case strategy at the outset and deliver consistent results at a fair cost.

Private equity firms operate in high-stakes environments where speed, execution, and risk directly impact investment returns. Our private equity lawyers advise sponsors and their portfolio companies throughout the investment life cycle. We help you execute transactions, manage risk, and address the legal, commercial, and regulatory issues that impact how your investment performs.

Our private equity team includes more than 150 lawyers in 20+ offices worldwide. Working across disciplines including finance, tax, antitrust, investment funds, restructuring, and litigation, we provide integrated guidance to support domestic and cross-border investments across industries and asset classes.

We advise you on acquisitions, dispositions, recapitalizations, carve-outs, minority investments, joint ventures, and other strategic transactions. Our private equity lawyers structure deals and negotiate terms to help you manage risk, create value, and support performance across all stages of your investment – from fundraising to exit.

Competing stakeholder interests often lead to disputes. Disagreements over governance, deal terms, and post-closing obligations can create significant exposure for private equity firms and portfolio companies. Our litigators work alongside deal teams to help you navigate disputes while preserving enterprise value. We represent you through mediation, arbitration, and litigation in state and federal courts, including the Delaware Court of Chancery.

With one of the most active transactional practices in the US, we understand how complex deals are structured, negotiated, and executed. By combining deep market knowledge with cross-disciplinary capabilities, our private equity lawyers help you mitigate risk and advance your strategic goals throughout the life cycle of your investment.