Joel A. Bernstein Attorney

Introduction: We're changing the way people do estate planning. Joel A. Bernstein and Associates is Lexington's foremost innovator in the areas of estate planning education, ground-breaking automation techniques, and writing and providing plain-English estate planning documents. All our documents are prepared by Attorney Joel A. Bernstein, who has created over 1800 trusts, wills, health care proxies, and durable powers of attorney. In his office, he uses a whiteboard to explain concepts in both words and visually. Since 1992, we have conducted public and private seminars for more than 10,000 individuals and groups across the country, from Chicago and New York to Boston's North Shore. Our participants have consistently given us ratings that are, as far as we know, unmatched among estate planning providers in Massachusetts. He lectures regularly for the Foundation for Continuing Education, and throughout the U.S. for Surgent McCoy, to CPAs on trust topics. He is known for his easy-to-understand style. His magnum opus is the chapter he proposed and then edited with Professor Charles Rounds of Suffolk University Law School for the national treatise of Loring and Rounds: Handbook for Trustees. First published in 1898, the chapter on "Administrative Trusts" is based on Bernstein's knowledge gained from leading practitioners in California, a leading source of revocable/living trust practice. He has written for Callaghan's Law Office Economics Journal, and has addressed the Massachusetts Conveyancers Association and American Bar Association. Bernstein was columnist for the ABA's Probate and Property magazine. Bernstein's lively presentations, the depth of his love of trusts, and clearly explaining estate planning have given Bernstein and Associates a proven track record: since the beginning, Bernstein has provided more living trust estate plans than many other lawyers in the Boston area combined. Our sole focus is estate planning and post-death administration of wills and trusts. This gives a depth of knowledge that is communicated well throughout our work. The Bernstein and Associates philosophy: * Our job is to help individuals get and maintain clear and effective estate planning documents. * The best legal style is simple and direct. * To have clear documents that can be understood, a legal writer must reject many old and meaningless conventions. * What distinguishes effective from ineffective trusts and other estate planning documents is empathy for the reader and future beneficiaries.