Keeping Them on Their Toes

It was past midnight, and John Hartog had been in the mediation for hours.

A family of 15 beneficiaries was slogging through their deceased loved one’s business and money matters, and all that was left to discuss was the tangible personal property. This shouldn’t take long, thought Hartog, then in his first couple of years as a mediator in estate planning and probate cases. 

But then arose the question of who should inherit the decedent’s petrified whale penis. And the real fight began.

“He had found it somewhere or bought it,” recalls Hartog, now 74. “And dammit, they were not going to bend on that issue. Both sides. I thought, ‘It’s 1 o’clock in the morning, and we’re arguing about a petrified whale penis. Are you serious?’ Of course, the minute one [beneficiary] got excited about something, that side of the family got excited about it. And the other side of the family got excited about it the other way.”

Finally, Hartog was able to whittle the group down to two siblings, with everyone else out of the room. “And then I got one to concede, and that was that,” he says.

The bizarre object of contention wasn’t the only thing that made that night unforgettable. “This is the case that taught me to start at the beginning, not at the end,” Hartog says. “After that case, I always did the TPP first. And it turned out to be a really smart thing, because that’s what people would fight about. Of course they’d fight about the money. But it [didn’t have] the emotional attachment, and that made it easier to settle.”

Having practiced law for 47 years—34 of those running his own firm, Hartog Baer—and having given expert testimony in more than 75 high-stakes fiduciary and malpractice trials, Hartog knows a thing or two about what matters to grieving families. He is known for his ethical standards and warm disposition, reassuring clients with a sympathetic style and disarming opponents with a feisty sense of humor. 

“Working with John definitely keeps you on your toes,” says retired trusts and estates attorney Albert Handelman, who has known Hartog for 40 years. “He likes to fully vet any ideas—yours and his both—by discussing what rules might apply, and why those rules are the rules. Of course, when we are opposed, which has mainly been as opposing expert witnesses, he can be vexing. But then, that’s what he was hired to do. He can be wound tight at times, and he can become impatient. But he knows that, and he works to be more patient than his innards might dictate.”

Bob Temmerman Jr., who practices estate planning, trusts and probate law at Temmerman, Cilley, Kohlmann & Norcia in San Jose, has locked horns with Hartog as opposing expert witnesses approximately 25 times. They’re also close friends whose families sometimes travel, cycle, and spend vacations and holidays together. “When we are on opposite sides of a case, he forces me to be on my toes,” says Temmerman, echoing Handelman. “I have to do more research and really think through my arguments.”

He adds: “John brings out the best in me. And while he may have a little bit of an ego, it is certainly well-deserved.”

Hartog laughs when asked about that egotistical side. “That is not the first time people have said that of me,” he says, noting that more than one of his continuing education students have written “This guy’s really full of himself” in their reviews. Once, when Hartog was giving expert testimony, the judge turned to him and said, “Mr. Hartog, I think you’re overconfident in your opinion.”

Says Hartog: “I’m not afraid to express myself, and that can come across as … I don’t know, arrogant. But it’s more like self-confident. And that translates into an ego.”

If he sometimes acts like a know-it-all, it may be because he knows a lot about a lot of things—not just law. A voracious reader who grew up in New York, Hartog wore out one of his parents’ easy chairs, devouring history books and eclectic tomes for hours at a time to relax and “make sure that I could survive” in a house with three chatty sisters. 

At Pomona College, Hartog seriously considered becoming a history professor, but, after learning about the impact of law on societal development—and the fact that lawyers read for a living—he felt torn between the two. Discussing his dilemma with a philosophy professor in the spring of his senior year, his mentor suggested, “Take a gap year, have fun, and think about which profession you’d rather be in. If you still can’t decide, go to law school.”

After backpacking parts of Hawaii, the Andes, and the Pacific Crest Trail in North Cascades National Park, Hartog still wasn’t sure. So, taking his professor’s advice, he enrolled in what is now UC Law San Francisco, in 1977. He soon realized that learning case precedents was simply another way to immerse himself in history.

Upon graduation, like many young lawyers, Hartog wanted to be a hotshot litigator—or anything but an estate planner. “It was actually the dullest class I had in law school,” he admits. “The worst professor taught this subject matter.” 

The universe had other plans: As the lowest rung on the ladder at a tax-oriented firm in California, Hartog was assigned to estate planning and trusts because none of the other attorneys wanted to tackle it. “And I came to the realization, pretty early, that this was a very stimulating way to earn a living,” he says.

It is, after all, a people practice—something that fits Hartog’s personality. “It’s all about human relationships, and that’s fun. You get to help people and you get to see if you can remedy fundamental problems in family structures,” he says. “Usually you can’t, but at least you can put some Band-Aids on them. … The longer I’ve done it, the more I enjoy it.”

Hartog didn’t stay long at that first firm—“I didn’t like working for that lawyer, and he subsequently was disbarred,” he says—before moving on to his second, and then third, where he practiced for a decade. Regardless of who he was working for, however, the work proved he was on the right path. 

In one early case, two brothers had inherited a substantial $30 million estate in a traditional 50-50 split. There was plenty of money to go around, but the siblings were feuding over every single detail. “We were trying to negotiate a settlement, and my client would say, ‘I’ve got to have X,’” Hartog recalls. “Finally, his brother says, ‘You can have X.’ And my client says, ‘No, I want Y,’ vice versa.

“By the time they had finished fighting with each other, they each walked away with a million dollars. It was a very educational case; I saw the human emotions just driving common sense out the window. And then I started to have more cases, and discovered that that was pretty common.”

In his early years, Hartog learned to listen first and advise later—even though, he asserts, “Someone can come into my office and tell me about a dispute, and I can pretty well figure out, within the space of an hour or two, where this case ought to settle.”

In 1989, when the senior partner at Hartog’s firm died of leukemia, the new boss suddenly had no interest in a practice that “couldn’t bill 20 hours a day.” Two years later, Hartog founded his own estate planning firm, practicing solo for a decade. He brought on more attorneys in 2001, and quickly discovered that his “personality is very good as the boss, and not so great as an employee.”

From the start, his practice focused solely on estate, trust and probate work—and that remained true when he joined up with his wife, Margaret Hand, a now-retired trust attorney, and Dave Baer, who handled estate litigation. Knowing Hartog and his colleagues wouldn’t veer out of their lane, lawyers from other practice areas didn’t feel threatened by referring work their way. 

While their estate planning work generally proceeded smoothly, quite a few head-scratching family squabbles surfaced on the postmortem side. For example, during the administration of a parent’s belongings, three siblings who were “totally obsessed about fairness” amicably worked out their monetary assets. That’s when the conversation boomeranged back to a single sticking point: the piano.

“Everyone thought they were entitled to it, and no one would give it up,” says Hartog. So, in a bluff straight out of the Old Testament, he leaned in and said, “OK, let’s cut the piano in thirds, and you can each have a third.”

“They looked at me, and they didn’t think it was funny. But they agreed that the piano would be shipped between the three of them for four months, every 2026,” Hartog says. “None of them played piano.”

On July 31, 2025, Hartog’s long-standing practice joined the Orinda office of the Boston-based Nutter McClennen & Fish. He and the lawyers and staff from his previous firm started the next day with an eye toward the future for the younger associates. “Both Dave and I are over 70, and we’re not going to practice until we’re 90, that’s for sure,” he says. “We had [also] grown tired of being the last word. It is very pleasant to be able to tell people in the office, ‘I understand your point, but I can’t answer your question. Call Boston.’”

Now, Hartog is going full-speed as he helps Nutter develop a presence in California. And he can’t help but notice a lot of handwringing among veteran lawyers who worry that new attorneys aren’t attracted to trusts and estates. “What I have been saying to young lawyers is, ‘You should give it a try, because you will be surprised how interesting and fun it is; it’s really a stimulating way to practice law.’ One reason I was able to build a successful practice was that there weren’t very many people standing up, if you will. People are saying the same thing now.”

In his down time, Hartog and Hand are avid hikers and bicyclists, having pedaled around the world. “My wife and I have given up camping,” he says. “We like to sleep on a bed and have a shower.” Hartog also enjoys the company of Bess, the couple’s Australian shepherd; and has weekly dinner debates with his youngest daughter, who took the path he didn’t: She’s a high school history teacher.  

Even when Hartog’s away from the office, his friend Handelman points out, “He has to mark his calendar for ‘time to relax’ or ‘time to recreate.’ Because, when he’s on, he’s on. Even ‘fun’ topics, like current events, he likes to bring to bear his knowledge of history and the like—to not just vent, but to drill into what’s going on in a meaningful way.”

“I call it neuroses,” Hartog laughs. “That’s why I like cycling so much. It’s an easy way to quiet the noise in my head.”

Just as he has quelled his clients’ anxieties. After all these years, Hartog still compares his role to a psychological counselor. But, he says with a laugh, “I am much smarter than psychologists, because I get to charge legal rates.”