Private Client Services |
Family Office Practice

Family Office Practice

Lowenstein Sandler's Family Office Practice serves as integrated outside counsel to ultra-high-net-worth families, single- and multi-family offices, and family-controlled investment platforms. We combine one of the most active investment management practices in the country with a nationally recognized private wealth capability. This enables us to advise family offices not just on traditional planning, but on the investment structuring, regulatory compliance, and direct deal work that define how the best-run family offices actually operate.

At the core of the practice is a multidisciplinary team whose combined expertise spans trusts and estates, taxation, investment management and fund formation, private equity and M&A, venture capital, employment law, real estate, and dispute resolution. Our team includes alumni of the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Tax Policy, academic institutions, and institutional investment management firms.

Who We Serve

Technology and Life Sciences Founders
Our clients include entrepreneurs and executives who have experienced or are approaching significant liquidity events and seek to establish a professional structure to manage and grow their wealth. We advise families whose wealth has been built through innovation—often originating in the technology, life sciences, and investment management sectors where our firm has deep institutional knowledge—and who seek to invest it the same way. We understand the unique planning opportunities (and time pressures) associated with IPOs, M&A exits, and secondary transactions. Our venture capital practice has advised on more than 1,000 venture deals in the past two years, giving our family office team the experience to move at founder speed.
Established Family Offices
We advise operating single-family offices and multi-family office platforms that require sophisticated outside counsel across investment management, tax, regulatory, employment, and estate planning matters. Whether the office has in-house counsel or relies entirely on outside advisors, we provide the day-to-day accessibility and institutional knowledge of a dedicated legal team across every discipline that a family office encounters, providing the breadth of a national law firm with the personalized attention of a trusted advisor.
Family-Controlled Investment Platforms
Our team represents families whose offices have evolved into active investment vehicles pursuing direct investments, co-investments, fund commitments, and operating company acquisitions, and who require counsel experienced in both the private wealth and institutional investment contexts simultaneously.
International Families
Our team frequently works with non-U.S. families making investments in or relocating to the United States, requiring coordinated advice on pre-immigration tax planning, investment structuring, regulatory compliance, and ongoing cross-border estate and gift tax obligations. We coordinate with foreign counsel to develop structures that are tax-efficient across jurisdictions; we also advise U.S. families with international investments, operations, or family members residing abroad.
Multigenerational Families & Family Enterprises
Our team provides counsel to families navigating generational transitions in wealth, governance, and business leadership, including succession planning for family-controlled operating companies, restructuring of legacy trust and entity structures, and engagement of rising generations in investment and philanthropic decision-making.

How We Work

Formation, Structuring & Governance
We advise families at every stage of the family office lifecycle, from evaluating whether a dedicated office is warranted, through initial formation and structuring, to ongoing governance and eventual restructuring as circumstances evolve. For families with growing trust networks, we help design and implement private trust companies, which provide robust, multigenerational governance structures, incentives to attract non-family experts as fiduciaries, and potential federal and state tax benefits. Beyond legal structure, we help families design governance frameworks, including family councils, investment policy statements, and succession protocols, that embed the family's values into the management of its wealth across generations.
Investment Management & Capital Deployment
Lowenstein's family office clients benefit directly from the firm's position as one of the nation's most active law firms in venture capital, private equity, and fund formation. We advise family offices on the full spectrum of investment activity: structuring and managing family investment vehicles; allocating capital to third-party managers across private equity, venture capital, hedge fund, and private credit strategies; evaluating and executing direct investments, co-investments, and joint ventures; and pursuing seed-stage, angel, and impact investments aligned with family values. Drawing on our team’s decades of in-house experience at multi-billion asset managers and broker-dealers, we are uniquely positioned to provide our clients with bespoke and actionable guidance that allows them to navigate the complex derivatives and structured products world, structuring and negotiating counterparty arrangements that are best suited to a client’s size, trading strategy, and asset class.
Regulatory & Compliance
Family offices operate in an increasingly complex regulatory environment. We assist clients in qualifying for and maintaining the family office exclusion under the Investment Advisers Act, structuring activities to avoid broker-dealer registration requirements, and complying with FinCEN's beneficial ownership reporting requirements under the Corporate Transparency Act. For family offices considering the transition from pure LP investing to active GP-style deployment, we advise on the legal, regulatory, and operational implications of that evolution.
Tax Planning & Wealth Transfer
We develop comprehensive income and transfer tax strategies for family entities and individual family members, including sophisticated generation-skipping transfer tax planning, grantor trust structures, valuation planning, and charitable lead and remainder trust strategies. When necessary, we also advocate for our clients before the Internal Revenue Service in ruling requests, audits, and other tax controversies to defend these strategies. For families with international connections, we provide pre-immigration and post-immigration tax planning and coordination with foreign counsel on cross-border asset structures. Five members of our trusts and estates team hold Fellowship in the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel (ACTEC), a distinction awarded to lawyers who demonstrate the highest level of integrity and expertise as trust and estate counselors.
Family Office Operations & People
Running an effective family office requires the same operational infrastructure as a sophisticated private enterprise. We advise on the recruitment, compensation, and retention of key family office personnel, including the negotiation of employment agreements and the design of deferred compensation and incentive structures aligned with family objectives. Our guidance also covers commercial contracts, vendor agreements, real estate leases for office space, cybersecurity and data privacy programs, and the protection of family confidentiality and reputation in an increasingly digital and surveilled environment.
Philanthropy & Social Impact
We counsel families on the design and implementation of philanthropic strategies that achieve both charitable objectives and tax efficiency. Our work includes the formation and operation of private foundations, donor-advised funds, supporting organizations, and charitable trusts; compliance with complex tax rules governing private foundations; and the structuring of social impact and ESG-aligned investments that integrate philanthropic goals with the family's broader investment portfolio.
Family Disputes & Fiduciary Litigation
When disputes arise—whether among family members regarding control or distribution, between fiduciaries and beneficiaries, or involving external parties—we offer solutions to bridge gaps or, if necessary, join the fight on behalf of one or more parties. Our experience encompasses business divorce, fiduciary litigation involving trustees and executors, contested estate and trust matters, and the negotiation of separation and restructuring agreements that allow family branches to pursue independent paths while preserving overall family wealth.

Practice Leadership

Edmund S. Cohen
Partner
Chair, Family Office Practice

Kristin V. Taylor
Partner
Vice Chair, Family Office Practice

OUR TEAM

Marie T. DeFalco
Partner

Michael N. Gooen
Partner

James E. Gregory
Partner

Sam E. Khan
Partner

Boris Liberman
Partner

Scott H. Moss
Partner

Christine Osvald-Mruz
Partner

Elinor Ramey
Partner

Jean Nicolas “Nick” Samedi Jr.
Partner

Nicholas San Filippo IV
Partner

Kenneth J. Slutsky
Partner

Tracy A. Snow
Partner

John S. Stolz
Partner

Michael P. Vito
Partner

Julie Levinson Werner
Partner

Bridget Harris
Senior Counsel

Meghan M. Federman
Counsel

Marc L. Lomasky
Counsel

Image of Tricia Y. Wagner CIPP/US, CISSP, CISA

Tricia Y. Wagner CIPP/US, CISSP, CISA
Counsel

Zachary Bocian
Associate

Geena M. Caporale
Associate

Farah Z. Hussain
Associate

Sara Lazarevic
Associate

Michelle Podolnyy
Associate

Jessica I. Stewart
Associate

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NEWS & INSIGHTS

Practice Leadership

Edmund S. Cohen
Partner
Chair, Family Office Practice

Kristin V. Taylor
Partner
Vice Chair, Family Office Practice

Honors & Awards

Five Attorneys Elected as Fellows of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel (ACTEC)
Chambers High Net Worth, published by Chambers & Partners: Ranked Band 1 for Private Wealth Law – New Jersey and District of Columbia (2016-2025)
The Best Lawyers in America, published by Best Lawyers: Recognized in the Tax, Trusts & Estates, and Real Estate Law sections (1993-2026)

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Alternative Data = Better Investment Strategies, But Not Without Concerns

Private Client Services |
Family Office Practice

Alternative Data = Better Investment Strategies,
But Not Without Concerns