Father Knows Best
Why Michelle Beneski and Dan Surprenant followed their dad’s legal footsteps
Published in 2024 Massachusetts Super Lawyers magazine
By Dan Heilman on September 25, 2024
Most of us get along with our grown siblings. But working alongside them five days a week? That’s not for everybody, but it’s no problem for the sister-brother team of Michelle Beneski and Dan Surprenant.
“We agree on 90% of things, and we just work out the other 10%,” says Surprenant. “We are very different, and that’s probably good. … You can go into business with a lot of great lawyers. But Michelle and I know neither of us would do anything to intentionally hurt the other. There’s a longstanding trust there.”
The firm of Surprenant & Beneski, which is based in New Bedford and has three southeast Massachusetts offices in total, has been a family affair for years. Dan and Michelle’s father, Bob Surprenant, now retired, started the firm as a general practice in 1969 before focusing on elder law and estate planning in the wake of having to navigate his mother’s growing dementia.
Beneski, who had been working in tax law for major accounting firms, was ready for a change, too, so she joined her dad in 2003, as did Dan in 2006.
The latter, now 55, had been a prosecutor for five years, then worked in construction and medical malpractice litigation before coming aboard the family firm.
“It was a lot of time in court,” he says. “I liked that as a young person, but it’s an exhausting way to live. I’d always looked for ways to see my job as service. This practice area was a place to really do that.”
To the surprise of both siblings, the drastic change in practice area suited them.
“Dad had other clients he had helped with protecting their house, getting benefits,” says Beneski, 58. “He thought it was a valuable service that not a lot of people were offering, especially in this area. You could do a lot of good and still do well for yourself. It was a good fit for what I was doing, and it fit with our values.”
After some fine-tuning, the firm has found its niche, navigating estate and elder law in Massachusetts and its neighboring states. And while Surprenant and Beneski generally don’t collaborate on cases, each can count on sound advice from the other when it’s needed.
“We round-table things,” says Surprenant. “One of us might be assigned to a case, but often one of us will go into the office of the other and we’ll run scenarios and hammer out solutions.”
One result of doing good work in what can be an emotionally charged practice area, Beneski says, is that the referrals practically make themselves.
“I had a case where I had planned the parents’ estate years ago,” she says. “We got everything in place. Then their adult daughter developed cancer and passed away, and I was able to set everything up so there was no probate. Then the mom developed dementia, and we got a plan in place and got her on MassHealth. The dad died, then the mom died, and I got to know the sister and worked on her estate.
“So I kind of worked my way through the entire family.”
The sibling relationship and intrafamilial clients aren’t the only ways a sense of family permeates the firm. The other four attorneys—partner Erin Nunes and associates Rebecca Spinner, Wendy Weston and Cierra Storbeck—all made their first career stops at the firm. Nunes in particular has a long history with the firm and the family behind it.
“Erin has been with the firm 20 years,” says Beneski. “She started out as my nanny. We watched her go through law school, come on board as a baby lawyer, and she made partner a couple of years ago. So there’s a lot of history there, a lot of trust.”
Surprenant and Beneski have their eye on expansion and, eventually, succession—especially as there’s continued growth in the demographics that need their services.
“Dan and I have different time horizons, and we have a great team in place,” says Beneski. “We’re figuring out the best way to take care of the clients that we have.”
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