About Andrew Brandt
Andrew Brandt is the associate editor on Super Lawyers‘ staff. He serves as the editor for the Missouri-Kansas, Mountain States, Oklahoma, and Texas Rising Stars magazines, and he additionally writes, fact-checks and proofreads for numerous other Super Lawyers issues (and for the website). He graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with degrees in English literature and environmental studies, and his byline has appeared in a variety of places, both online and in print.
Articles written by Andrew Brandt
How To Crowdfund Equity for a Business
In 2015, Anthony Zeoli, a Chicago attorney with Hinshaw & Culbertson, noticed that many of his neighboring states had intrastate equity crowdfunding laws while Illinois did not. Intrastate equity crowdfunding — similar to rewards crowdfunding — is a type of fundraising that allows potential investors to give businesses money in exchange for an ownership stake. Zeoli wrote Illinois’ bill, HB3429, and saw it get passed into law in 2016. The bill allows Illinois companies to raise up …
The Tie That Binds
Stephen Hayes tried the first traditional surrogacy case in Wisconsin, then helped write the law on itDavid and Marcia Rosecky had been friends with Monica and Cory Schissel for years—such great friends that Monica had, on multiple occasions, offered to carry a child for Marcia, who could not. In 2009, the Roseckys agreed, and the embryo was conceived via artificial insemination with Monica’s egg and David’s sperm. The two couples then entered into a parentage agreement. Stephen Hayes, a family law attorney in Waukesha who helped draft the agreement, says contracts are typically done …
Immigrants Always Have the Right to an Attorney
If you’re an immigrant in Texas and you’re facing deportation, you always have the right to an attorney. However, you may not have right to removal proceedings. “If someone’s been picked up by immigration, and they’ve been formally ordered deported in the past, they don’t have the right to removal proceedings,” says Garry Davis, a Dallas immigration attorney with Davis & Associates. “They have the right to an attorney, but generally they don’t have a right to see a judge …
Lost in Translation: Understanding the Role of a Notary
If there’s one legal issue in Texas that could likely be wiped away if it was given more attention, it’s the notario situation. According to Austin immigration attorney Robert Loughran, in Latin America and Spain, a notario publico is more than a lawyer — it’s a well-educated and certified position that goes back hundreds of years. In the United States, of course, “a notary is much less than a lawyer,” Loughran says. “Anyone with $80 and a clean criminal record can be a notary.” …
To the Bootheel
Robert Rachlin on defending low-income clients in Missouri and ArkansasMy first case in Missouri in the late ’80s involved an African-American man who had been charged with the murder of a white man in the area of Missouri known as the Bootheel. There was a public defender down there who was defending this fellow, and apparently he felt he needed some help. I got involved through an old friend, Maurice Geiger, who was an expert in the area of court planning and had a lifelong dedication to helping underprivileged people. We were having dinner in Burlington. At …
Hallowed Ground
Renato Matos helps religious organizations survive through real estateIn 2008, when Renato Matos graduated from law school, he assumed he was going to be a corporate tax lawyer at a large law firm—and for a time he was. Then in 2010, at the request of a senior partner at Capell Barnett Matalon & Schoenfeld, he found himself working on a real estate matter for a Lutheran church council. “I just loved it and started doing more real estate and less tax law,” Matos says. “I’d say about 98 percent of my practice is [now] real estate related to …
Their Greatest Gift
What Amy Tripp’s grandparents taught her about life and elder lawI knew early in law school that I wanted to do something with people with disabilities, including issues of aging in vulnerable adults. When I was in high school, I had the opportunity to do some volunteer work at a couple of our local nursing homes, and that was always intriguing. After law school, the first Medicaid application I did was for my 97-year-old great-grandmother, who was admitted to a skilled nursing home for her end-of-life experience. I had never done a Medicaid application—so …
Busy in Buffalo
Joe Hanna is the hardest-working person in the roomJoe Hanna knew he wanted to be a lawyer by the time he was 6 years old—though he pictured the profession as more of a stepping stone than final destination. “I used to go to the library, right down the street from our house, with my father; we’d read president books together,” says Hanna, who chairs Goldberg Segalla’s sports and entertainment group in Buffalo. “I thought that, in order to be the president, you had to be a lawyer. No father or mother is going to correct a son or …
Collaborative Divorce in Oregon
For divorcing couples who can’t get along in marriage, getting along during the divorce process is a big ask. But it is a lot cheaper than going the combative route. “You’re not going to solve your emotional frustrations, and you’re not likely going to teach the other party a lesson by going through a divorce,” says Jaye Wickham Taylor, a family law practitioner with Buckley Law in Lake Oswego. “An awful lot of people think that if the judge only knows what a scumbag the other …
Communication Is Key in the Divorce Process
For couples considering divorce, sometimes the simplest advice from an attorney can shift the entire divorce process. “I tell them to sit down and talk to each other,” says Karen DeLuccie, a former family law attorney in Independence, Missouri. “I always tell clients to do that, and it always surprises them, but if you don’t talk, you’re going to have World War III.” However, if the battle lines in your divorce case have already been drawn, Missouri divorce attorney …
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