Special Advisors
Natalie Choate
Special Advisor on Retirement Benefits Planning
Natalie B. Choate practices law in Boston, Massachusetts, with the firm of Nutter McClennan & Fish LLP. Her practice is limited to consulting on estate planning and retirement benefits matters.
Her books “Life and Death Planning for Retirement Benefits” and “The QPRT Manual” are leading resources for estate planning professionals.
For more information, visit Retirement Benefits Planning
Letha McDowell, CELA
Special Advisor on Elder Law Planning and Legal Strategy
Letha Sgritta McDowell currently serves as InterActive Legal’s Director of Legal Strategy. Letha is an ACTEC Fellow and past president of NAELA, and practices law with The McDowell Law Group. She is licensed to practice in both North Carolina and Virginia and has been an elder law and special needs planning attorney for more than 15 Years. Letha is a Certified Elder Law Attorney, is Board Certified as a specialist in Elder Law by the North Carolina State Bar Board of Legal Specialization, and is accredited to prepare and prosecute claims with the Department of Veterans Affairs.
At InterActive Legal, Letha provides insight into how modern law firms run in order to assist in strategic decisions about how to maximize the tools provided by InterActive Legal, as well as what tools may be useful for practitioners in the future. In addition, Letha contributes to the elder law and special needs planning content in the software and to the InterActive Legal practice management and development tools.
Letha is a member of the Board of Directors for the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys and the North Carolina Bar Association’s Elder Law and Estate Planning Sections, serves as Vice President of the Elder Law Specialization Committee for the North Carolina State Bar, and serves as an active mentor to a number of young attorneys through the North Carolina Chapter of the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys. She is a 2001 graduate of Purdue University and a 2004 graduate of the University of Maine School of Law.
For more information, visit The McDowell Law Group.
Stephen J. Silverberg, Esq., CELA, Fellow, Cap, AEP®
Special Advisor on Elder Law Planning
Stephen J. Silverberg is nationally recognized as a leader in the areas of estate planning, estate administration, asset preservation planning and Elder Law. He is a past president of the prestigious National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys (NAELA), and a founding member and past president of the New York State chapter of NAELA.
Silverberg was awarded the credential of NAELA Fellow, the highest honor bestowed by NAELA to “attorneys… whose careers concentrate on elder law, and who have distinguished themselves both by making exceptional contributions to meeting the needs of older Americans and by demonstrating commitment to the Academy.” Silverberg is also a founding member of the New York State chapter of NAELA.
He holds the designation of a Certified Elder Law Attorney (CELA), awarded by the National Elder Law Foundation. There are fewer than 400 CELAs throughout the United States.
For more information, visit his site, the Law Offices of Stephen J. Silverberg, PC
Scott Solkoff
Special Advisor on Elder Law Planning
Scott Solkoff is President of Elder Law College and a Florida Bar Board Certified Elder Law Attorney. He is a Past-Chair of The Florida Bar’s Elder Law Section, Past-President of the Academy of Florida Elder Law Attorneys and has also served as a Board Member of the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys and the Florida State Guardianship Association.
Scott is a Fellow of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel and the co-author, with his father, of a 1000-page two-volume set, Florida Elder Law Practice Guide, for Thomson Reuters. Scott started Elder Law College as a tribute to his father, Jerome Ira Solkoff, one of the pioneers of the field and Scott’s mentor (and many other lawyers) in Elder Law. Elder Law College provides attorneys with a guided path into the field of Elder Law through its three and a half day “360 Elder Law Practice Builder Program,” a robust Member Portal with hundreds of hours and video and audio for Elder Law training and solution-spotting, regular meetings and seminars and a private listserv. With members from thirty-six states, state chapters have also formed and the organization itself has a state resources section on its Member Portal.
In both his practice and for Elder Law College, Scott’s guiding business principle, instilled by his father, is to do well by doing good and he sees Elder Law as an ideal vehicle for doing so.
For more information, visit Elder Law College, and Solkoff Legal, P.A.