August 3, 2022

The Law Offices of Max Elliott, Ltd. has a remarkable, cohesive, and dynamic team that works in several jurisdictions.

Support
• Janeth Rivera, Sr. Probate Law Clerk, manages our probate client files with aplomb. Janeth enjoys time with siblings and parents in her home north of Chicago.
• Erin Schmitt, Executive Legal Assistant extraordinaire, owns my calendar and is our client whisperer. Erin and her family, including Topongo, reside in the Georgia mountains.
• Danielle Walker, primo Paralegal, primarily focuses on our estate planning client matters and is our internal “coder.” Though Danielle lives in Chicago, her hometown, Nashville, remains big in her heart and she returns often.

Marketing
• Allison Branen, Advisory Board Member, guides our digital strategic planning. Originally from North Carolina and a big fan of the Kentucky Derby, she’s now Chicago-based.
• Valerie Dramé, Advisory Board Member, knows all about niche marketing (and fabulous leather goods). Residing with her family, including beloved Diego the parrot, Valerie enjoys life in the diversity west of Chicago.
• Madison Holloway, Marketing Coordinator, is the engineer behind our marketing machine. If you’ve noticed our “paws” commentary, that’s our Madison coming live with an amazing social conscience from Austin, Texas.

Business Operations

• Edward B. Llewellyn-Thomas, Advisory Board Member, says the Moon is sufficient for now when I want to take the firm to Mars. Edward hails from Toronto, Canada but moved to Chicago for business and has since remained, thanks to his squash buddies.

Attorneys

• Maximillienne “Max” Elliott, Managing Attorney and Founder, is me. It’s been more than 11 years since I started the firm, wearing all hats until a few years ago. It’s a joy working with our team and our clients and learning something new every day. Chicago has the best deep-dish pizza on the planet. Where else could I live?
• Samuel “Sam” Eirinberg, Associate Litigation Attorney, handles our contested and thorny probate cases. As a litigator, Sam is equally tenacious and dismissive, with knowledge about technical procedural rules that often baffle our opponents. And when he puts the legal saber down, he enjoys Chicago’s live music scene.
• Janelle Green, Associate Attorney and, equally important, an Armed Services veteran, decided law would be her second career and services our clients in central Florida, where she resides with her equally sunny disposition. Janelle handles family law matters, which is a new area for us.
• Ashley Lindsey, Associate Attorney, works with me on estate planning and uncontested probate matters. Ashley is a proud first-generation college graduate and Chicago native. Her human superpower: she can organize anything.
• Ruth Stein, Associate Attorney, represented veterans and low-income persons until the legal aid organization where she worked lost significant funding. Ruth resides in New Jersey with her family but is licensed in New York, handling our estate planning and estate administration cases. Ruth has Jedi focus.

Special Thanks: Former Advisory Board Members Stephen Hoffman who told me after 10 years that I didn’t need training wheels anymore; and Abiola Kalejaiye who needed to focus 24/7 on his burgeoning career in fintech.

As one of a handful of African American estate planning and estate administration firms in Chicago, New York, and Florida, our firm has 3 groups of constituents: you – our clients; our communities; and our colleagues.

To satisfy constituents’ needs, especially our clients, we use a lot of technology to perform remedial work, leaving our brain power free for creative, human problem-solving. While we’ve used technology pre-pandemic, the pandemic resulted in increased efficiencies in many apps we use, also helping us serve our clients more efficiently and serve more clients.

Pre-pandemic, I spent several hours monthly providing pro bono services to a family community center. The pandemic demonstrated that we could provide similar services to people across the country, and, for a while, we did through our “Access to Justice” or “A2J” program. Now, in light of recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings, we are turning our attention to women’s rights and voting rights and back to marriage equality.

Sharing legal knowledge and current best practices with colleagues to improve the legal profession as a whole has always been one of my self-prescribed responsibilities. Accordingly, I routinely teach continuing legal education (CLE) courses throughout the year to attorneys nationwide.

Legal Newsflashes
• Beginning January 1, 2023, potential guardians must take a class and become certified before being appointed a guardian.
• Most businesses must comply with the Corporate Transparency Act’s rules regarding beneficial ownership.

It is essential that our firm provides high-quality client services – from work product to communications. Because we are small, it can be challenging as demand increases and the number of lawyers in our practice areas decreases. Still, it is why our team works together to identify and use efficient, effective, and reliable methods to serve our clients.

We routinely test and review our processes and systems and, most importantly, listen to you when something goes wrong. The last 24 months have proven that continual review is needed and our ensemble takes that responsibility seriously. Furthermore, I cannot express how proud I am of our team for how they engage with each other and our clients to bring the best professional experience our firm can muster to everyone who interacts with us.

No, we are not perfect but we give it our all and I won’t and can’t ask for more than that.

The above brings into focus our mission: To protect today’s families.

WE do this by acting as a strong, compassionate, cohesive team, respecting each other and all those with whom we interact.
WE seek to perform our duties and functions efficiently as we can in delivering excellence in as many ways as we can.
WE seek to serve and exemplify the incredible skill and benefit derived from being a diverse team and serving a diverse constituency.

There are no “others” or “them” in how we at The Law Offices of Max Elliott, Ltd. approach our work.

WE seek to serve all those who WE can reasonably and practically serve, as counselors-at-law, as support, as advisors, and as fellow human beings.

Yup, it’s been a while since I have communicated with you. So I thought I would share the humanity behind the firm.
Next time, I’ll talk about trusts, wills, estate, or probate…

Thank you for your continued support.

Kindest regards,